Haiti child stories: Marevie

We first heard about Marevie last January, who was discovered by an SOS worker shortly after the earthquake. A year old, she weighed only four kilograms, was extremely thin and very ill. SOS Children quickly established that Marevie was being cared for by her father's girlfriend. However, with food extremely scarce following the devastation, she was not being fed because the girlfriend was only feeding her biological children, leaving Marevie severely malnoursished.

SOS staff took Marveie to the hospital and slowly but surely, she started to get better. There was great relief when she was allowed to leave hospital for the SOS Children's Village Santo (in Port-au-Prince) and join an SOS family for good. 

That was a year ago. Today, Marevie is surrounded by a very large family of 19 children, cared for by one SOS mother and two ‘aunties’. The family is larger than usual because the SOS Village in Santo is looking after hundreds of extra children who have been orphaned by the earthquake. Marevie is much loved by her older sisters and brothers who are carefully monitoring her progress. She can now walk and has said her first words.

Even though Marevie was only a baby when the earthquake struck, she has been severely traumatised. According to SOS staff member Louis Klamroth, she has been traumatised by her starvation, which was deliberate and caused by her stepmother, who fed her own children at the expense of Marevie. She would almost certainly have died if SOS Children hadn’t spotted her emaciated body amongst so many other children at a community feeding centre.

Find out how you can help more children like Marevie by starting an emergency relief sponsorship 

Watch Marevie's story on video: