CRS working for a prosperous and independent Haiti

Catholic Relief Services (a US member of the Caritas confederation) has been working in Haiti for 50 years. The morning after the 12^th January 2010 earthquake, CRS staff members who had lived through the disaster themselves were aiding survivors.

Photo by Elodie Perriot/ Secours Catholique

Our long experience in the country, and hand-in-hand partnership with the Catholic Church in Haiti, has enabled CRS to make great strides in the past 5 years:

• Rebuilding St. François de Sales as a state-of-the-art teaching hospital.
• Reinvigorating an education system for Haiti’s future generations.
• Laying the financial groundwork for true ownership of permanent homes.
• Working with farmers to bring sustainable food sources back to the island.

Haiti presents immense and complex challenges that require a firm grounding in faith and long-term commitment to sustainable actions that achieve meaningful results. We have one goal: a prosperous, independent, whole Haiti.

Five Years Later: 11 Success Stories From the Rubble of the Haiti Earthquake

1. Immediately following the earthquake, CRS provided 10 million meals to more than 1 million people in affected areas.
2. Using hand-powered rubble crushers supplied by CRS, communities removed almost 1.5 million cubic feet of rubble. Nearly 389,000 cubic feet of it was recycled and used for foundations of more than 4,500 transitional shelters and 300 latrines.
3. CRS helped 10,500 families resettle in Port-au-Prince, providing transitional shelter—sturdy earthquake – and storm-resistant buildings that enabled people to return to their neighborhoods. As part of community rebuilding efforts, CRS also supported clean water, sanitation, safety measures, house repairs and education.
4. CRS installed or repaired 2,397 sanitation facilities (sinks, latrines and related plumbing) in Port-au-Prince. CRS constructed 8,140 rainwater catchment units for transitional shelters, and installed 394 showers and 29 potable water tanks or inflatable water bladders. CRS also constructed or repaired 3 1/2 miles of drainage canal.
5. CRS created short-term employment for about 11,100 people (42 percent of them women) through cash-for-work activities to improve local infrastructure. Participants worked a total of 217,630 days and earned more than US$2 million.
6. In partnership with the Catholic Church in Haiti, CRS rebuilt St. François de Sales, one of the country’s oldest hospitals. The 200-bed teaching hospital is 1 of 7 faith-based hospitals CRS is working with to improve the quality of health care for Haitians.
7. Haiti’s cholera outbreak killed thousands. CRS built cholera treatment units, medical incinerators, laboratories and storage facilities for seven partner hospitals. With our partners, CRS provided soap, water-purification tablets and hygiene guidance to 450,000 families. We distributed more than 41,000 cholera kits and sanitised 250,000 homes, and trained 2,264 community health workers and 905 civil protection committee members in cholera awareness and treatment. They, in turn, helped train nearly 3.1 million people in the community.
8. CRS is the first nongovernmental organisation in Haiti to work directly with Haitian banking institutions to develop a loan product with a reasonable interest rate that will enable low-income households to manage the reconstruction of their own homes.
9. CRS conducted a first-of-its-kind survey of all Catholic schools in the country. To improve the quality of education, CRS, in partnership with the Episcopal Commission for Catholic Education and with funding from dioceses in the United States, is using that data to design programmes aimed at improving quality education, including teacher training and primary school literacy programmes.
10. CRS is helping to revive the Haitian coffee industry. We have helped create a network of six coffee cooperatives, planted 265,000 new coffee trees and facilitated the sale of 43,000 pounds of coffee.
11. CRS provided 10 Haitian dioceses with US$1.1 million for 180 projects and US$1.5 million to support Church partners. CRS hosted more than 50 training sessions for U.S. dioceses on best practices for parish partnership. CRS has worked in Haiti for more than 50 years and intends to work alongside Haitians for as long as needed.