It’s been nearly two years since the devastating earthquake struck Haiti on Jan. 12, 2010.
In the months following the disaster, we received lots of donations to help rebuild and support the families and children affected. In all, we received over $30 million.
After receiving the donations, we began work on 21 strategies to address Haiti’s needs. Some of these needs were more immediate, while others are longer-term strategies.
Needs varied from food, temporary shelters, trauma counseling and medical care, to rebuilding Implementing Church Partner (ICP) buildings and income generation projects.
We still have four strategies in process or ongoing to maintain the support and needs of our ICPs, children, and their families.
- Pastor Encouragement and Vision Casting: Post trauma counseling training for pastors of church partners and non-church partners, as well as hosting a conference on integrity, justice, and stewardship for Haitian leaders as they rebuild.
- Child Protection: Provide school fee assistance, prosthesis and physical therapy, as well as monthly support for more highly vulnerable children.
- Income Generation: Provide training and opportunities for parents and caregivers of our beneficiaries to begin or expand a business, which improves their economic position and provides jobs within the community.
- ICP Facilities Reconstruction: We have faced some challenges that have delayed reconstruction but have identified solutions allowing us to build, safe, seismically sound facilities for our church partners.
- Quality Building Blocks: All blocks to rebuild the ICPs failed quality testing. We identifed a vendor to produce blocks that met the strength test needed for construction that is seismically acceptable.
- Qualified Engineers: We could not find engineers in Haiti who knew and understood how to build according to seismic codes, so we had to recruit trainers from El Salvador to oversee the building of each ICP and closely monitor each step of the building process.
- Design and Budget:The original design the team of engineers produced exceeded the allowable budget for the rebuild project. This set the project back three months.
- Pace of Building: We can only build one ICP at a time due to the close supervision and training needed for the Haitian construction team by the El Salvadorian trainers. Our plan is to increase building to two to three ICP facilities at the same time once an expanded number of construction teams have been trained and can demonstrate skill and adherence to acceptable building standards.
As we receive information on the progress of these efforts we will publish more updates.