Haiti Earthquake Orphan update: 14000 children fed daily
Feb 26, 2010 12:50 PM
This is the 25/26 Feb update of our work
- Lone and orphaned children
- We are now approaching full capacity of 500 children living in our safe haven and SOS family houses. Basic facilities including toilets, washing, cooking and sleeping accomodation is in place. We are trying our best to accomodate as many as possible but each family house which typically until a month ago had a mother and ten children in four bedrooms now has twenty children and several additional adults. The additional children put into the houses are all the youngest ones. The situation is abnormal but quality of care has to be assured - starting from proper clothing and shoes to a place to sleep, nutrition and health. Now survival is in place we are looking and planning toward some sort of education and "normal" structured activities for children. Tents are placed on the village site to organise the care of children during the day with focus on learning and healing through play.
- The training process of the mothers continues and now the first phase is concluded; next activities will take place directly in the family houses.
- The registration of the unaccompanied and separated children living at the village is continued by UNICEF and with support of SOS staff.
- Family strengthening programme & wider earthquake affected population. Next steps are:
- Definition of area leaders to take responsibility for food distribution in each zone as well as supervise community leaders running food distribution points.
- Starting monitoring the quality of processes and implementing improvements.
- Starting educational activities to go along side the food distribution. At the moment the “distribution points“ mainly function as basic aid spots (food for the children) but we are developing them to provide a better level of crucial service including day-time safe havens for children
- Staff
- A group of Spanish volunteers are working in the project (nurses, nutritionist, electrician and IT) for three to four weeks.
- The situation of Haiti's children demands new responses. If we want children to return to their families or remain with their families, we have to support children living with their families with a focus on education and health. Education in Haiti is a privilege and many parents are aware of it and therefore they do all they can to assure better opportunities for their children
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