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Haiti six months on

Six months ago, the capital of Haiti, one of the poorest and most densely-populated cities in the world, was ripped apart by an earthquake. As many people were killed in less than one minute than in the Asian tsunami of 2004. Trócaire has worked in Haiti for almost 20 years and we know and respect many local organisations on the ground with whom we have been responding to the crisis.

In the immediate aftermath, Trócaire, alongside the global Caritas humanitarian network, provided shelter to 160,000 people, healthcare to one million people and food to over one and a half million.

This work was made possible by the incredible generosity of the Irish people, north and south, who gave €7.58 million to Trócaire for Haiti, half of this through church collections.

With your money, we provided a school feeding programme in Port-au-Prince and then developed safe places for children to learn, play and recover in five of the main camps set up for survivors. We worked to reunite children with their families, and to make sure they were protected from violence, abuse or exploitation in those camps. Then we helped them with trauma counselling, informal education and recreation activities.

Children like four year-old Sarah Pierre Leyisha, who can't remember when she started living in the camp, just that it was "a long time ago". The quake destroyed her house completely and her aunt was killed by a falling wall. She hates living in "the small tent that gets wet at night" but since coming to Trócaire's centre she says she is "not shy anymore, just happy." She says, "Before the quake I went to school and I liked it. But since I came to the camp I can't do a thing. Now I can make friends. I will come here everyday!"

Trócaire is also helping families that are hosting people who had lost their homes in the quake with additional food supplies and are training on public health issues in the camps.

Six months on, we are now concentrating on getting people out of their temporary shelters through a series of house-building programmes and are working to repair schools and hospitals throughout the city.

Haiti Earthquake News

Haitians helping Haitians

Trócaire's Conor O'Loughlin blogs from Haiti

Haiti six months on "Everything was black and neither up nor down"

Protecting children in Haiti's camps

Woman pulled from Cathedral rubble six days after Haiti quake

Haiti: “This Caritas distribution is the first aid we've got”

Haiti earthquake: one day a new beginning

Related Items

Download our Haiti Earthquake Disaster resource for Post-Primary
(Powerpoint file).

and

Tales of Disaster (pdf file)

Tales of Disasters is a resource for primary schools which helps children to understand why natural disasters occur and the impact they have on communities. The films treat issues sensitively and the characters are easy to relate to. DVD and activity book available from Trócaire.