Brighter Way Haiti Choir Haiti Relief Fund

Project Update: Field Report from February 2011

Excerpts of CARE’s report appear below. Click Here to View a PDF of the Full Report

CARE in Haiti: Looking at 2010

Immediately after the earthquake, CARE mobilized existing resources in Port-au-Prince and the rest of Haiti, while summoning support from its worldwide disaster response network. It supplied emergency shelter and household items, as well as food and safe water, to people forced to leave damaged, destroyed or dangerously unstable homes. CARE’s initial response reached 290,000 beneficiaries through the distribution of tarps, tents, shelter kits, ropes, mattresses, blankets, kitchen sets, jerry cans, hygiene, safe delivery kits, newborn kits and food.

The Plan for 2011

CARE’s goal for 2011 is to promote sustainable development in Haiti while providing emergency relief for those still suffering from the earthquake’s effects. To accomplish these goals, CARE plans on focusing on the following programs:

• Promote and aid Haitians seeking to move to durable transition shelters.
• Repair water mains, drill boreholes and construct rainwater catchment systems.
• Focus not only on distributing hygiene kits, but also actively promoting good hygiene practices.
• Provide families with seed packets and training necessary to cultivate their own crops.
• Reach out to pregnant women and traditional birth attendants with supplies and information to facilitate safer and more sterile conditions for child birth and promote equal participation of women, men and youth in decision making about ongoing recovery activities through awareness-raising on gender equity directed toward CARE staff, volunteers, community members and government employees.

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Project Update: Field Report from September 2010

Click Here to View a PDF of the Full Report

Transitions for a Healing Nation

Emergency assistance and relief have been CARE’s main focus in Haiti for the past nine months. Now, with a multitude of programs in place, CARE is looking towards the future of Haiti, and will begin to focus its efforts on giving communities the tools they need to support and provide for themselves. As CARE transitions into this new phase, they are hopeful and confident that the people of Haiti will eventually be able to restore their own community to being self-sufficient once again. Within each of their major focus areas (i.e. shelter, water, waste management), CARE has begun to implement programs that will put the success of Haiti back into the hands of the people who built the culture. Says one survivor, “I [feel] alive again.”

One Step Further
Having tackled the most urgent needs of the community, CARE has begun to delve deeper into the less-obvious problems faced by a population overcoming a disaster, such as:

Mental health and well being of residents
Education regarding reproductive health
Prevention of gender-based violence
Stimulation of the economy

Programs devoted to these types of aid include:

Children’s mental health program including distribution of toys and games, and counseling for parents of distressed children
Building of women’s shelters that promote outreach activities and provide various services, such as counseling on gender-based violence, and awareness-raising on STIs, HIV, and AIDS
Cash-for-work programs that provide employment opportunities for residents, while helping restore the country. Examples include waste management and agricultural jobs.

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Project Update: Field Report from April 2010

Three months after the devastating earthquake, the CARE team has made significant progress in responding to Haiti’s most pressing needs and developing a long-term strategy to facilitate the nation’s ultimate recovery. CARE has organized a timeline for this effort and divided it into three stages: Relief (January 2010 – April 2010), Transition (April 2010 – January 2011), and Rehabilitation (January 2011 – 2015).

Phase I: Relief (January 2010 – April 2010)

CARE’s priority during the initial Relief Phase was to address the most immediate needs facing the Haitian people by providing clean water, nutritious food, and emergency supplies. Sanitation proved to be the most pressing challenge in the wake of the earthquake and CARE supplied 10 mobile vacuum tanks to help remove waste from sites where latrines cannot be installed. By coordinating their efforts with local partners and other organizations responding to the earthquake, the CARE team was able to reach 311,000 people during the Relief Phase — more than four times the number that was originally projected!

Phase II: Transition (April 2010 – January 2011)

This past month marked the beginning of CARE’s Transition Phase. Already, the CARE team has begun implementing a range of new objectives that build upon their previous efforts to stabilize Haiti’s communities:

Strengthen health programming
Provide economic
opportunities
Assist with the provision and care of temporary or transitional shelters. These shelters will provide families with a more secure home
base while they wait to
rebuild their homes.
Distribute school kits and furniture
Raise awareness to prevent
gender-based violence
Decongest overcrowded sites so that earthquake victims can move to open spaces identified by the UN and Haitian government

The 300 CARE staff on the ground in Haiti are working tirelessly to accomplish these goals. Please read the CARE Report “The Way Forward: Haiti Three Months After the Earthquake” to learn more about the dedicated CARE team and the initiatives they have already implemented in Haiti. The following is an excerpt from this report in which Caroline Saint-Mleux, CARE’s Emergency Response Team Leader, reflects on CARE’s efforts in Haiti up to this point:

CARE’s teams have worked without a break for three months, day after day, to serve

those most affected by the disaster...Read more!

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Losing Home

Photos: 2010 Evelyn Hockstein/CARE

Since January 12^th’s devastating earthquake, Haitians have struggled with bleak living conditions, in particular the region's lack of sufficient shelter. As one CARE staff member reported, “Shelter is makeshift. A subject of common prayer: 'We hope that rain does not fall!' The big majority of the shelters set up so far assure essentially a symbolic role of limitation of territory guaranteeing a minimum of security and of intimacy. That means that the existing shelters do not protect against anything at all, if that would be wind, sun, cold, heat and even less against rain.”

Photos: 2010 Evelyn Hockstein/CARE

Read the account of how the family of one CARE team member is coping with the loss of their home in Rick Perera’s “Heartbreaking Visit:” I’ve just returned from one of the most heartbreaking visits of my two weeks here…Read more!

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CARE Reaches 50,000 With Plans to Impact 120,000

Photos: Evelyn Hockstein/CARE

As of January 30^th, CARE’s distribution efforts had already reached more than 50,000 of Haitit’s earthquake survivors. On the 31^st, CARE and other international aid agencies began a massive food-distribution effort in partnership with the Haitian government and the World Food Programme (WFP) that is designed to reach 1.2 million people over a 15-day period. For the duration of the program, CARE is responsible for ensuring 1,700 families receive 25 kilograms (55 pounds) of uncooked rice every day in Delmas, one of the 16 distribution sites in the greater Port-au-Prince area. This rice will help provide each family with sufficient food for two weeks. By the end of the effort, CARE will have assisted almost 120,000 people in desperate need of food. Read more about CARE’s ongoing relief effort in Haiti!

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Life Hanging by a Thread: Field Notes from a CARE Team Member

Photo: 2010 Evelyn Hockstein/CARE

Among the 3 million Haitians who have been affected by January 12^th’s earthquake, CARE estimates there are at least 37,000 pregnant women who are in urgent need of assistance. In a recent field report, Loetitia Raymond, a CARE team member, offers a moving description of the brutal conditions facing many of these women as CARE staff race to help them.

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January 25th Update: CARE Impacts 31,000

Photo: 2010 Evelyn Hockstein/CARE

As of Sunday, January 24th, CARE had reached nearly 31,000 survivors of the Haitian earthquake in Port-au-Prince, Pétiton-ville, Léogâne, Carrefour and Jeremie. CARE staff have successfully distributed food, water purification packets, jerry cans, hygiene kits, mattresses, and blankets. CARE has also ensured an estimated 7,600 living in makeshift camps in Pétiton-ville and Léogâne have access to clean water. In the coming week, team members plan to continue these efforts and will also begin dispensing high-energy food, tents, and first aid kits.

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January 21st Update: CARE Distributes Hygiene Kits

Photo: 2010 Evelyn Hockstein/CARE

CARE successfully distributed hygiene kits on January 21^st in Pétion-ville, a suburb east of Port-au-Prince. After assessing and registering new mothers and pregnant and elderly women on Wednesday, CARE staff distributed the kits and ensured that registered women were given top priority. The hygiene kits contained essentials, such as soap, toothbrushes and toothpaste, shampoo, detergent, toilet paper and sanitary napkins.

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Field Notes from a CARE Team Member

Photo: 2010 Evelyn Hockstein/CARE

On January 19th, Patrick Solomon and Steve Hollingworth, CARE's COO and EVP for Global Operations, were part of a convoy that distributed water bladders, jerrycans, and hygiene kits to 135,000 people in Léogâne, a town southwest of Port-au-Prince. Hollingworth’s field report from the day recounts the process CARE staff are applying to efficiently and peacefully work with Haiti’s affected communities to reach those who most urgently need assistance.

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January 20th CARE Update from the Ground

Update: A 6.1 magnitude aftershock hit Haiti on the morning of Wednesday, January 20^th. CARE emergency response teams have sent messages via SMS and email reporting on the situation and confirming they are prepared to provide support as needed.

On January 19^th, CARE teams distributed water to 25,000 people and simultaneously provided 2,000 families with water containers and hygiene kits. Staff are also disbursing high-protein food in consultation with hospitals and local emergency teams to reach those the earthquake left most vulnerable. CARE’s mattress distribution has been postponed as the local mayor plans to relocate survivors from their makeshift campsites to a football field, where those in need will be able to receive additional assistance.

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January 18th Update: CARE Targets Women and Children

Disaster-relief teams in Haiti are now facing a ticking clock. Ruptured water lines, growing waste, and the lack of a sewer system are escalating the threat of disease outbreaks and infection in the devastated nation. CARE warned on January 16^th that pregnant women, breastfeeding mothers, and young children are at the greatest risk of being compromised by these conditions. Team members have already hit Port-au-Prince’s streets to give women a crash course in using the 600,000 water-purification packets CARE is distributing in the capital. In addition, CARE is organizing to provide those women and children most at-risk with emergency food rations, hygiene kits, and infant kits. CARE is also partnering with the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) to address the urgent needs of pregnant and lactating women and prevent further loss of life.

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January 16th CARE Update: Distributing Water in Port-au-Prince

Clean drinking water and food have become two of the biggest needs for earthquake survivors in Haiti, and emergency relief teams are working to provide earthquake survivors with safe water and food rations as quickly as possible. Sanitary conditions in the region are continuing to worsen. Desperate survivors have resorted to drinking any water is available, placing them at risk for serious illnesses including cholera. In response, CARE is focusing on distributing water purification (PUR) packets that once dissolved, make any water safe for drinking. On January 16th, CARE reported that one of its convoys was transporting enough packets to supply 75,000 people with 3 liters of clean water for 10 days.

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Haiti Relief: January 14th CARE Update from the Ground

As our partner CARE continues to respond to the tragedy in Haiti, Citizen Effect is working to keep abreast of the conditions on the ground and the impact CARE’s work is already having. The CARE team’s first priority is to coordinate with U.N. agencies and other aid organizations to obtain food and water for Haiti’s affected areas.

CARE has already shipped water purification sachets from nearby Panama to Port-au-Prince and today, deployed additional emergency relief staff to the city. This personnel includes team members who responded to Haiti’s devastation in 2008 in the wake of Hurricane Hanna. In addition, CARE is planning to distribute an initial 10-tons of high-protein biscuits from warehouses in Haiti, enough food for 60,000 emergency meals. CARE is also working with the World Food Program, which is airlifting 86 metric tons of additional biscuits – enough for half a million emergency meals – from its satellite logistics hub in El Salvador.

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