Gina's Haiti Relief Benefit

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!