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Immediate Earthquake Response
Mercy Corps provided a month’s supply of food to patients and their families at the Port-au-Prince General Hospital in the days immediately following the earthquake. Photo: Cassandra Nelson/Mercy Corps.
Mercy Corps is training local caregivers to help children cope with the trauma of their earthquake experiences and move toward healthier futures. Photo: Photo: Cassandra Nelson/Mercy Corps.
Following the January 12 earthquake, Mercy Corps first focused on survivors’ immediate needs, specifically for food. After an initial visit and food distribution at the General Hospital, Port-au- Prince’s largest hospital, we stocked the hospital’s empty pantry with one month’s supply of non-perishables including rice, pinto beans, vegetable oil and corn soya-blend. We also financed the hospital’s purchase of fresh produce. This intervention allowed staff to cook hot meals for 1,000 patients, families and personnel for the first time since the earthquake.
We are now starting the hard work of long-term recovery, both in Port-au-Prince and the provinces outside the city where many of the new homeless have fled.
Creating Jobs and Hastening Economic Recovery
Mercy Corps has launched a cash-for-work program, employing people in some of the worst earthquake-affected neighborhoods of Port-au-Prince. Using tools we recently shipped in, survivors are working to clear rubble, drainage canals and agricultural land. In addition, we have distributed shelter materials, including plastic sheeting, to displaced families in makeshift camps.
We anticipate that our cash-for-work program in the Pétionville and Tabarre communities of Port-au-Prince will ramp up to provide more than 7,000 people with short-term jobs – usually about a month – doing essential recovery work such as cleaning wells. Our jobs program will allow earthquake survivors to earn a daily wage and get money in their pockets so they can purchase the goods their families desperately need. These purchases, in turn, inject vitally needed cash to restart the Haitian economy.
The next critical steps in re-booting Haiti’s economy will include cash grants so that people can rebuild assets like small businesses, fishing boats and food carts. We are also looking into partnerships using microfinance and remittances to allow nascent businesses to stabilize and grow. Mercy Corps is already working with microfinance provider FONKOZE to help recapitalize its clients post-earthquake. Efforts like this are essential to return Haiti’s
economy to a functioning state, both in Port-au-Prince and in the provinces to which many of the city’s now-homeless are returning.
Training Caregivers to Help Children Heal
We have also launched our Comfort for Kids program, which provides training to caregivers so they can tend to the needs of traumatized children. The Comfort for Kids program held its first training sessions, reaching dozens of community leaders. On a regular schedule, we will continue to train local psychologists, teachers and other caregivers in our methodology to help Haitian children recover from the trauma, grief and loss of the earthquake.
Comfort for Kids is a post- trauma counseling methodology that was first developed in New York by Mercy Corps and Bright Horizons, a global workplace childcare provider, to help children recover from the trauma of 9/11.
Health, Clean Water and Sanitation
Mercy Corps is working with local people and other NGOs to identify ground water sources and assess the quality of water and sanitation systems. We plan to help thousands of survivors access vital clean water and sanitation services. We’re also planning to assemble and deliver hygiene kits – with mosquito nets and other critical supplies – to earthquake survivors. We installed the first of our emergency water systems, provided by ITT, in a small Port-au-Prince hospital run by our colleague organization Merlin. This system is now providing reliable, clean water to the hospital’s patients and staff. More water filtration units are on the way for installation at other locations.
Mercy Corps in Haiti: An Overview
The devastating 7.0-magnitude earthquake that rocked Haiti on January 12 killed up to 200,000 people and left 3 million people in need of aid, exacerbating the already-dire humanitarian situation in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Mercy Corps’ team of emergency response experts is working to meet survivors’ immediate needs – water, food, shelter, hygiene – while laying the foundation for long-term recovery and self-sufficiency.
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