French | Spanish | Creole Message from the Caritas family in Haiti On the occasion of the first anniversary of the 12th January earthquake, the members of the Caritas Internationalis Confederation, in communion with Caritas Haiti, feel the need to express once more their proximity to all the victims of this tragedy. They reaffirm their ...
Caritas Haiti Crowded conditions in camps, limited access to water and heat poor sanitation combined to create a cholera time bomb for Haiti’s earthquake victims. The first cases emerged in the Artibonite region in mid-October. Two months later, over 2,300 people had died from the disease and over 100,000 had been ill. Cholera is spread ...
Caritas started to send staff, aid and to donate money within hours of the earthquake. Caritas Haiti, Catholic Relief Services (a US member of Caritas) and Caritas Switzerland already had programmes in Haiti. They were on the ground assessing the situation and establishing what immediate needs were from the beginning In the first few months, ...
Catholic Relief Services (CRS – an American member of Caritas) had been working Haiti 55 years before the earthquake struck. On 12 January, CRS had a staff of around 300 on the ground who had been working on existing programmes. Here’s how the year panned out: 12 January: When the earthquake hits in the afternoon, many ...
Close to a year after the earthquake, Caritas relief and reconstruction programmes in Haiti are well-established throughout the country. Caritas will invest more than $217 million in Haiti over a one year period that started in May 2010. This aid will cover further emergency needs caused for example by hurricanes, floods or the cholera epidemic, ...
With Port-au-Prince in ruins following the earthquake, hundreds of thousands of people fled to the countryside. Les Cayes, in the south or Haiti, is a rural zone. It is very vulnerable to heavy rains, floods and soil erosion due to deforestation. Enelio Teme is trying to help his relatives who arrived from Port-au-Prince following the ...
Caritas Czech Saint Louis Wilner is counting his blessings that his wife and children are alive. He lost family members in the earthquake and also his house and possessions. His wife lost her business and he lost his job as a result of the disaster. It’s been a tough year. He’s taking his three-year-old daughter, ...
The afternoon of the Haiti earthquake many children died or were left trapped in collapsed schools. An estimated 90 per cent of schools in Port-au-Prince were damaged or destroyed, leaving around two million children without access to education. Literacy rates in Haiti were already low compared to global standards before the earthquake. The Haitian authorities ...
Cordaid – Caritas Netherlands Francois Tifabe was walking through an alley near his home on 12 January 2010 when the ground started to shake. Before he understood what was happening a nearby wall collapsed and the debris fell on his leg. “I still feel the pain and need a stick to walk,” said Mr Tifabe, ...
Caritas Austria Nelson Elissier and Michelle Azor built their house brick by brick. They didn’t have much money, but every time they got a little, they bought building materials for their house. It took four years to complete their home, but just six months after they had finished, the earthquake destroyed what they had worked ...