We currently have 22 volunteers and two staff in Haiti. Our ninth team of volunteers is scheduled to leave on Sunday, February 7. Since the earthquake happened, we have sent 30 volunteer orthopedic surgeons, anesthesiologists, general physicians, nurses, and health care administrators to Haiti. Together they have ministered to more than 4,000 patients. We will continue to send in new teams to replace the teams that are returning. For firsthand accounts of their experiences, check out our volunteer blogs.

An anxious and excited throng dashes towards the water truck as it pulls up outside the shanty camp of makeshift shelters in Port-au-Prince.

Such dry, dusty camps have become home for thousands of Haiti’s earthquake survivors.  None has any water supply – except for what comes in the 3,000-gallon trucks.

When World Relief’s water truck arrives, scores of women and children carrying buckets and other containers rush forward to get in line – desperate not to miss out on their water ration.  As the water flows, frantic mothers jostle for position to fill their containers quickly – worried that the supply might run out before they’ve filled their own buckets.

In the past few days, World Relief’s team has delivered 20 truck loads of water, a total of 64,000 gallons, to thirsty quake survivors in the camps – literally a lifeline for some 12,000 households living on the very edge.

Living Water

At each camp or delivery location, World Relief appoints a community representative who is responsible for accepting the water and making sure that it gets into the hands of vulnerable families.

At this location, 27-year-old Penel – a local church member – is accountable to World Relief for the water distribution.

Penel explains that he is a Christian – a member of the local Assemblies of God Church.  In this camp and its sprawling neighbor camps, about 700 members of his local church have set up makeshift shelters, built out of tarp, faded sheets, sticks and scrap corrugated metal.  Every day is a struggle to find enough food and water.

“This water is life to us,” he says.

Penel explains that his church – like many other churches – was destroyed in the quake, so now the congregation gathers outside the church, or in the camp, to pray and worship together.

“We share water and food together,” he says.  “As a Christian, I am ready to help others in any way I can.”

World Relief continues to deliver water to the most vulnerable survivors, ensuring they have water to drink, cook with, and bathe with.

At a local orphanage, World Relief drilled a borehole to provide clean water for the children and the community surrounding the orphanage.

“This will make a very big difference,” says Pastor Pierre Alexis, head of the orphanage that is home to nearly 60 children.  “We are planning to invite people from the community to come and get water here.  It is important to show people the real Jesus – the One who cares not only for their body, but also for their soul.  If you follow Jesus, you must show it through your actions, not just say it.”

Clean water – dangerously scarce immediately after the January 12 quake – is absolutely critical, says Warren Wright, World Relief’s project manager at the scene.

“Our goal is to provide clean drinking water that will keep the children free of diseases,” he explains.

Pastor Alexis, a 36-year-old father of four, puts it another way. “Water is indispensable to our balance of life.”

Over the past three days Debbie Blue, Robert Johnson and I have had the great opportunity of visiting threes project sites in Ethiopia of our partner Water First.  CWR has partially funded the three water system projects. One is fully functional, providing clean water at several locations convenient to all the families in the community.  Another is just a couple of weeks from completion, and construction will soon begin in the third community.  Providing clean water that is easily accessible is what Water First does very well.

Kindenta (a mere guess at the spelling) lives in the community that doesn’t yet have a water system. She is one of the most amazing people I have ever met. She and I carried 20 liter water tanks on our backs from the local water hole to her house 2 km (a little more than a mile) away.  Kindenta who is about 5 feet and has a small frame  carried the tank on her back with ease. I, on the other hand,  quickly broke out into a sweat and was very ready to get that tank off my back when we got to Kindenta’s house.

As we walked I got to know a bit about Kindenta and her life. I found out that she carries these tanks from the water source to her house up to eight times a day. That means she often walks about 20 miles a day, 10 of those miles with a full tank of water on her back, just to get water for her family.  What makes the story even more amazing is that she is fetching  dark brown water that is contaminated by animals that stand, drink, and defecate in the water

When I asked Kindenta how old she is she replied, “About 35.”  She had to drop out of school after grade 8 in order to get married at about the age of 15.  She now has 7 children (don’t know if she has lost any others), the oldest 16 and the youngest 1.  I asked if her husband or her sons help her carry water and she said, “Absolutely not because carrying water is women’s work.”  When I met her 16 year old son, he didn’t appear strong enough to carry water.  He is very short and thin and looks no more than 10 or 11.  I asked her if she ever gets a break from carrying water and she said that she gets rest for five days after childbirth before she starts fetching water again.

In addition to raising 7 children and spending several hours every day fetching water, Kindenta also cooks in a very simple kitchen, works with her husband in the fields, helps take care of the chickens and the cows, weaves beautiful baskets, and keeps a very tidy house with no electricity and a dirt floor.

I asked Kindenta what brings her the most joy in life and she said, “When I see my children healthy and playing.”

In the midst of many challenges, not the least of which is the water situation in her community, Kindenta is thriving as a mother. She is definitely a model parent, especially when it comes to demonstrating sacrificial love for her family.  Kindenta is a dedicated, hard working woman who perseveres despite great difficulties in her life.  Thanks to the Water First water system construction which is about to get under way, within a year Kindenta’s life will become easier and the health of her family will likely significantly improve.

Often times we think that the poor in the world are simply people that need our help. However the reality is that among the poor in the world, there are many Kindenta’s who have much to teach us, the non-poor, about what it means to persevere in difficulty and to live selflessly and sacrificially for others.

·         More than 480,000 people have left Port-au-Prince for locations outside the city.  More than 90 percent of these people have sought shelter with relatives or friends.  These households—many already teetering on the edge of food insecurity—are at high risk in the coming days and weeks.  The need to target these homes—as well as respond to the needs in Port-au-Prince and other quake affected areas—is significant.

·         The plight of Haitian children continues to be a major media focus.  UNICEF estimates there are 375 orphanages hosting 230,000 children in need of support.  It continues to be important to note that because of extreme poverty many face in Haiti, orphanages often house children who have living parents.  After the quake, the United States government is still requiring that all appropriate steps be taken to ensure children do not have living parents or close relatives in Haiti before adoption is considered. The Department of Homeland Security has said, at least until proper legal mechanisms are in place, only adoptions in process before the earthquake can continue. The long term goal is to strengthen and reunite families and enable them to care for their own children.  Continue to pray for the safety and protection of children as well as the reunification of families who have been separated.

·         On February 1, schools not affected by the earthquake reopened.  Between 2,500 and 4,600 schools were not able to reopen.  The international community is working quickly to provide school materials, shelter and other necessary goods to benefit more than 720,000 students as soon as possible.

·         World Relief’s food distributions are shifting.  The World Food Program is centralizing their distributions through 7 organizations each established to serve the 17 districts in the city.  World Relief is working to ensure those churches and organizations we have been providing food for are transitioned into the new distribution system.  This week, we will continue to provide food at King’s Hospital and a church in Mais Gate. World Relief plans to continue to participate in feeding centers and distributions as we move forward, but the method is likely to change as the situation on the grounds shifts into longer term recovery.  Pray for continued cooperation of organizations on the ground.

·         World Relief is distributing water as well as planning for long-term water sources in communities. World Relief’s team has delivered 20 truck loads of water, a total of 64,000 gallons, to displaced quake survivors.   Our long-term plans include partnering with a local Christian organization to drill six boreholes—each around 100 feet deep—in  targeted communities.  These, costing about $7000 to drill, will be equipped with submersible pumps and provide a sustainable water supply in each community.  To read more about churches and communities involved in water distribution, click here.

·         World Relief secured the donation of 2,000 tarps—which will be distributed to vulnerable families this week.  We will continue to access additional tarps in the coming weeks.

·         In the United States, World Relief’s local offices are mobilizing to provide support for Haitians seeking Temporary Protective Status enabling them to work and travel in the United States.  World Relief’s Stephan Bauman, Amy Tenney and Jenny Hwang will join other organizations tomorrow in a briefing on Capitol Hill.

We weave through the village of makeshift shelters – sticks holding up a few faded and torn sheets, with pieces of cardboard and rusted corrugated metal filling in the gaps in the “walls.”

This is Haiti’s newest housing estate – one of scores of shanty camps that have sprung up across the capital Port-au-Prince in the aftermath of the catastrophic earthquake.

The people in these camps live in dire conditions.  They have no regular food source or clean water supply.  At night, parents remove the sheet covering their family’s shelter and lay it on the rocky bare dirt inside for their children to sleep on.  In that way, the “ceiling” doubles for a bed.

Since the quake, this is the new reality for hundreds of thousands of Haitians – living in a stick shelter or primitive lean-to because their home was wiped out by the giant tremor.

Yet – amazingly – many families in this camp of about 800 people rejoice in their circumstances – as desperate as they might seem.  They thank God they are alive – and praise Him for protecting not only their own lives but their children and grandchildren, too.

Singing Praises

When the evening breeze lifts the mugginess in the air, they get out their homemade drum and come together to sing praises to the Maker of heaven and earth.

“Hallelujah!” rings out across the camp, as these remarkably resilient families sing “the battle belongs to the Lord” - the children clapping and smiling.

These people trust in God to fight for them.  And they believe that the church will come alongside them in this, their hour of deepest need.

“We feel there’s no way we can resolve our problems on our own,” explains mother-of-three Altona inside the family’s shelter, which – like all the others in the camp – has its own number.  “But the church is our hope… we believe God and His people will help us in this situation.”

Altona’s home was flattened by the 7.0 quake January 12 – and she and her family spent a sleepless night on the street before carrying anything they could salvage from the rubble – tarp, sheets, sticks – to build themselves a shelter at the campsite.

Prayer Brings Strength

“We have no choice but to pray,” she says, “and we pray that things will get better.”

Roselia, her husband and their five children also look to God for strength during these difficult days in the camp.

“I give thanks to the Lord because He saved us from the earthquake,” 36-year-old Roselia says.

The family have been living in their 8-foot-square stick and tarp shelter since the day after the quake.

Some days, they have nothing at all to eat and the children go to bed on the dirt floor with burning hunger pangs.

“We live day to day,” Roselia says, “sometimes we have food, sometimes we don’t.  Today, the children have had nothing.”

According to Ilmond Noel, a leader in the camp, people are willing to share what little they have with others.

Often, if one family has food, they give some to another family that has none.

Ilmond and others have set up a committee to deal with problems as they come up.

“The families here have good relationships with each other,” Ilmond says.  “We have nothing in our pockets, but people help each other with food and water.

“Right now, people here are very hungry.  Many have nothing to eat – only a little water to drink. “

Ilmond glances skyward.

“But it does not depend on us,” he says.  “Our future is in God’s hands.”

Help Haiti’s most vulnerable.  Please consider a donation to Covenant World Relief. Click here to donate securely online.

Story by Julian Lukins and photos by Ray Tollison, World Relief International

Haiti’s local churches are filling people with hope in the face of one of the world’s most cataclysmic disasters in decades.

On Wednesday, World Relief acquired rice to feed approximately 120,000 people, in partnership with the World Food Program.

Local pastors say the feeding program is a lifeline for their churches and their communities struggling to get back to normal after the disaster.

“World Relief exists for the local church,” says World Relief’s Stephan Bauman at the quake zone.  “Our goal is to see the needs through the eyes of the local church pastors so that we can really understand what they are facing.”

Meanwhile, stories of hope continue to emerge.

Expecting a child at any moment, Tamara was trapped under the rubble after a building collapsed on her, crushing her legs.  Miraculously, she survived and managed to get to Kings Hospital.  Just hours after the quake, she gave birth to a baby whom she named Jesula – meaning “Jesus is here.”

This week, World Relief started assessments in local tent cities that are cropping up throughout Port-au-Prince as thousands of homeless people erect their own shelters out of sticks, cloth and tarp.

World Relief is also distributing water to the most vulnerable survivors and drilling bore holes to supply water at King’s Hospital and a local orphanage.

“In partnership with a network of local churches, World Relief is serving nearly 10,000 people daily with food and water.  There are plans to launch additional feeding centers in hard hit and underserved areas. In the first two weeks after the quake, World Relief and Medical Teams International worked to ensure hundreds of patients were served by doctors who set bones, cleaned wounds and performed surgeries at King’s Hospital. World Relief sent a plane full of medical supplies and equipment to serve urgent needs. Drilling has begun at King’s Hospital to install the first of six submersible pumps provided by World Relief - each one is able to pump 12 gallons of water a minute. ”

·         In the two weeks since the 7.0 earthquake hit Haiti, there have been more than 50 aftershocks of magnitude 4.5 or higher.  Experts say this will continue for months or even years.

·         The government of Haiti is saying 3 million people—1/3 of the population of Haiti—were impacted by the disaster.  As many as 1 million are displaced and still in need of temporary housing.  Temporary housing plastic tarps and other materials are flowing into the country.  The big push is to ensure people have access to temporary housing before the rains come later this spring.

·         Unconfirmed reports are putting the death toll at around 150,000.

·         World Relief International continues to access food from the World Food Program.  Thanks to their donation, we are able to leverage every donor dollar for $4 in food aid.  Around 10,000 people each day receive food from WR through a network of local churches.

·         Pastors and churches we have partnered with in the past are uniquely equipped to serve effectively in the earthquake’s aftermath.  One example was a church who had partnered with our Mobilizing Youth for Life program, keeping a careful database of the spontaneous displaced people’s camp that sprung up around it.  They have set up a system to track the 600 families and the services they are receiving.

·         Drilling has begun for the well at King’s Hospital.  Once this is completed the doctors and patients at King’s Hospital will be ensured a steady local stream of potable water.  We are continuing to access potable water and water treatment materials in the meantime.

·         Medicine and medical supplies arrived yesterday from the Bahamas.  These supplies—including antibiotics, IV fluids and a ventilator—will help doctors and nurses at King’s Hospital better treat the patients and complement the anesthesia machines that arrived via helicopter Monday.

-We currently have 25 medical volunteers and 4 staff in Haiti. This number will move up and down in the coming days as volunteers and staff leave and others replace them. Our medical volunteers include surgeons, anesthesiologists, nurses, other physicians, and administrators.

-Our team continues to work at The King’s Hospital, a 350-bed Christian hospital in Port au Prince. This hospital was scheduled to open next month, so when we began our work there, it was not quite ready for occupancy. The team has been working hard to get plumbing and electricity going. Structural engineers have certified the hospital as sound after the earthquake and the recent 6.0 aftershock. Our surgeons are working in 3 operating rooms. They’re saving lives every day. The surgery is not easy. There is minimal equipment. No x-ray machines. And, a lot of the surgery involves amputations, which no one likes to do but which is unavoidable in many of the cases. The 82nd Airborne has established a base within a 3-minute walk of The King’s Hospital and has helped us establish a security perimeter to safeguard the hospital at night. The U.S. military has also given us a portable anesthesia machine.

-We’re sending some of our volunteer surgeons to help develop and strengthen orthopedic surgery work in other hospitals. We’re now accepting post-surgery patients from the U.S. Comfort, which is located in the harbor and is absolutely full of surgery patients. We’re also working in close cooperation with a UN hospital and various other medical facilities in the area.

-We have established a clinic at a Baptist seminary campus, where more than 4,000 homeless people have come for shelter. We’ve also been asked to establish mobile clinics at many churches in the area because these churches are centers for care and assistance to people living in one of the more than camps that have sprung up for the 1.5 million people who have lost their homes.

-An Evangelical Covenant Church (Hope Community Church) and others in Ft. Lauderdale purchased, received and prepared items to be shipped on the flights between Ft. Lauderdale and Port au Prince. These partners, whom we have never met, were a great blessing and answer to prayer.

-We have airlifted donated  and purchased emergency medicines and medical supplies that are valued at $1.2 million to Port au Prince. On Monday morning, a donated plane will land with another 4,500 pounds of orthopedic equipment, medicines, medical supplies and a portable VSAT (satellite communications equipment that will provide high-speed access to the Internet from our office in Port au Prince.) A shared staff effort has also enabled us to procure a donated portable X-ray machine and a c-arm X-ray machine. These machines are valued at more than $100,000. They’re too large to be moved by plane but should arrive by boat in Haiti in 1-2 weeks.

-Over the next few weeks we will be looking at our long term response focusing on several areas of health programming: provision of medical services through volunteer teams, health systems development, emergency health, community health and education, child survival activities, capacity building and medical training, gift-in-kind medicines, supplies and equipment donations.

-A story from Marlene Minor (VP Communications): A pregnant woman and her husband came to The King’s Hospital for surgery on the woman’s leg. They were carrying the shorts of their 4-year-old son, who had been killed in the earthquake. After the woman successfully completed surgery, she was recovering in a cot in the courtyard when she went into labor and had to be taken back into the hospital for delivery. The husband remained in the courtyard, weeping and holding his son’s shorts in the air. With God’s blessing, the delivery was successful, and the woman delivered a healthy baby girl, whose name in Creole means “Jesus.”

-From Dr. Dan Diamond’s blog: “Dr. Marlene [the medical director for a partner group] took us to see what was left of her house. It was as if her home had been cut in half with a giant knife. Half of the house was there, but the other half was completely collapsed. Her father buried inside. We prayed for her as we stood there in the middle of the street with downed power lines all around. She was a very strong woman, filled with the power of God. She had lost her home, lost her father, had gone from living in a big house to living in a tent, and yet she was looking beyond herself to the needs of those she served. I stood there and cried.”

From World Relief International:

-Haiti’s local churches are rising to the challenge in their quake-ravaged communities – feeding and providing shelter for thousands of the most vulnerable survivors.

-By the weekend, four local churches partnering with World Relief will be feeding 9,500 people hot meals – rice and beans for lunch and porridge for dinner – every day.

-A local church in the Carrefour area has opened its doors to those who lost their homes, providing refuge for nearly 6,000 people in the community.  Stepping out in faith, Pastor Jean Bathard Anthony began feeding the people with what few supplies he had.  Now World Relief has come alongside Pastor Jean, assisting with food and water.

-On Wednesday, World Relief carried out an assessment in Leogan – a quake-damaged area outside Port-au-Prince that has not yet received significant aid.  Building on existing relationships with local churches in Leogan, World Relief plans to expand response efforts into the area soon.

-Water pumps have arrived in Port-au-Prince, and World Relief and a local partner plan to drill bore holes and install the submersible pumps to provide clean water for King’s Hospital.  At King’s, World Relief doctors have been working around the clock alongside medical personnel from the United States and Haiti to save lives.

Hundreds of survivors are being fed hot meals at World Relief feeding centers in Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s devastated capital.

Every day, World Relief’s Disaster Response team is working alongside Haitian church volunteers, serving rice, beans and porridge to up to 1,400 of Haiti’s most vulnerable people.

World Relief and local church partners plan to launch more feeding centers in the Leogan neighborhood of Port-au-Prince and Jacmel, two hard-hit areas that have been slow to receive any emergency aid.

Clean water is another giant need.  World Relief is working with a local partner to drill bore holes and install submersible water pumps.  Six pumps – each capable of pumping 12 gallons per minute – will be installed as soon as possible.

Hundreds of injured and traumatized victims are receiving urgent care at King’s Hospital – one of the few medical facilities still functioning in Port-au-Prince.

World Relief and partners have set up and supplied three operating theaters, staffed by American and Haitian surgeons, doctors and nurses.  King’s Hospital has 300 beds for the most seriously injured.

World Relief’s Country Director, Dr. Hubert Morquette, and Dr. Esther Gwan, from World Relief’s headquarters in Baltimore, continue to treat scores of people at the hospital, working around the clock in very difficult conditions.

“We have treated hundreds of injuries as well as countless open and closed fractures,” Dr. Morquette reports.

Tragically, one couple dug their young daughter out of the rubble and carried her to King’s Hospital in the middle of the night – only to watch her die in their arms as they arrived.