Haiti blog: A new start

Over the last days of 2010 more than 100 children of the SOS Children’s Village in Santo moved into their new homes. The temporary shelters, built on the Children’s Village grounds, help reduce the number of children in the family houses and provide a temporary home for many. All these children came here after the earthquake. The majority of them will be reunited with their biological families in 2011.

A group of SOS aunties is gathering at the back of a truck and choosing bedsheets for their new homes. "Everything here is new. We are making 20 houses ready for the children to move in. We bought beds, mattresses, fans... everything", says Jules Richard, director of the temporary shelters in Santo. These prefabricated houses were donated as part of the emergency relief programme after the earthquake in January 2010. Some of them have been in use since June, others will be in use from now on. "The process of moving is quite complicated, it needs a lot of thought and cooperation from everyone involved", says Jules Richard. Each house is a home to five children and one SOS auntie. One block consists of four houses and functions as a community in household questions and cooking.

It is important to organise certain things in order to still provide a loving and secure home to the children: "We don’t want to separate siblings. Those families where children under five years of age came here with their brothers or sisters stay in the SOS Children’s Village. Even though the shelters are a good alternative to proper housing they still don't provide all the facilities necessary to babies, for instance. Most of the infrastructure - like a bigger kitchen and a community house for leisure activities - are still in the process of being built". "It's cold at night and hot during the day. It will take some time until everything is working and we get used to our new homes", says an auntie who just moved here with five children. The fan has not yet been installed in her house, that’s one of the things that are being fixed these days.

Nevertheless, the children make do with what they have: A group of children is playing with a wheelbarrow, another group is standing in the grass flying kites fashioned from sticks and plastic bags. Ten year old James says he’s doing fine here. He still visits his SOS mother and his SOS siblings in the children’s village, but most of the day he spends in his new home. He is one of over 100 children that will be reunited with their biological families during 2011. After the earthquake thousands of families lost their homes and weren't able to provide for their children anymore. It took months to find out which children can be reunited with their families and when they would be capable to care for them again. The temporary shelters now accommodate those children until they move back with their families. But they also accommodate children who lost all their family members and who will move into the new SOS Children’s Village that is being built. "There are still a lot of difficult cases to be handled, but we just needed to act quickly. It will take some time until we have enough trees providing shade and spaces for leisure activities. But at least we are already providing the basics", says Jules Richards. He and his team are also moving their offices into the plastic prefab houses.

As the new year steps in, a new temporary Village is being born.