Record Details:

World Emergency Relief - 2010 Haiti Earthquake

Website: http://www.wer-uk.org/


Mission: World Emergency Relief UK has been working in Haiti since 2007. In particular it has focused on the vast slum area Cité Soleil. This severely deprived area is home to over 1 million people. Even before the earthquake, living conditions were shocking.

With no infrastructure at all the slum dwellers are left to fend for themselves. Few have access to safe water. Food is basic and some even resort to eating mud cookies to stave of hunger pains. Sewage runs freely through the streets.

The average salary is just $1 a day.

Some 25% of children in Haiti die before they reach 5. In parts of the slum this is closer to 50%.

The earthquake devastated the capital city of Port-au-Prince and the slum areas. The international response has been substantial and donors the world over have showed incredible generosity. But the slum areas plight has been widely ignored. This is why WER has chosen to concentrate its response in Cité Soleil.

Cité Soleil is undoubtedly a challenging place to work. Criminal gangs control some areas, it can be dangerous and intimidating and it is a very unsanitary place. But the people that live there desperately need our help.

Thanks to the astonishing response of our supporters to our emergency appeal, WER has been able to establish a substantial operation right in the heart of Cité Soleil. Our work is helping locals to not only rebuild lives but to work towards a better future.

Our principle partner is the Good Samaritan foundation. This community-led organisation runs a school and provides many kinds of help to people living in the area. It is also part of a wider network of community schools that provide similar assistance throughout Cité Soleil.

Since the earthquake WER and the Good Samaritan foundation have:

* Shipped of over £2 million of vital aid goods such as medicines and temporary shelters.
* Supported a clinic that has treat thousands of people in the slum areas
* Provided safe clean water, driven in to the slum and distributed from the Good Samaritan school
* Begun reconstruction work on the Good Samaritan School
* Committed to supporting a further 4 community schools that will provide not only education but also food and monitoring to 603 at risk children.
* Set up a food kitchen, distributing daily meals to local children.

You can be a part of this amazing work by donating now. A regular gift of just £15 a month will allow us to feed and educate a child through one of our community schools.





This organization provides Temporary or Permanent Service? Temporary

Notes:

FROM RELIEF WEB:

Complan based supplementary feeding for 252 children in Haiti

Source: World Emergency Relief (WER)

Date: 13 Sep 2010

In the slum area of Cité Soleil, Haiti many children are malnourished and underweight. Despite the massive aid operation not enough food is reaching those most in need. WER partner, the Good Samaritan Foundation has begun a supplementary feeding programme for over 252 'at risk' children that will ensure that they achieve and maintain a healthy weight.

Malnourishment can lead to serious, lifelong health problems, even death. The effects on children are particularly severe and can include stunting (slowed growth), wrinkling of skin, cracked finger and toe nails and a permanently weakened immune system. The experience of chronic hunger pains can traumatise a child for life.

In Haiti, before the earthquake, 22% of children were malnourished. Some mothers even resorted to feeding their children mud cookies because food was so scarce.

The January earthquake was a great tragedy for Haiti but the unprecedented response from donors across the world offers hope for the future. WER donors showed great generosity and thanks to their support WER is able to help the poorest, most in need children in Cité Soleil.

Last week 252 children were provided with a serving of Complan alongside a meal at lunchtime through the food programme at the Good Samaritan Foundation. These children will be given Complan and a meal every day for 6 months. The children's weight and health will be monitored throughout the 6 months.

For children like Rebecca, aged 10, this daily meal is the only secure food they have ever known.

"I am so happy to have this food," said Rebecca. "I used to fear every day that I would not have enough to eat and that I would feel the aches in my stomach. My mother worried about me all the time. But now I know that I can eat every day I feel so free."

Rebecca can look forward to at least another 6 months of food at a vital time during her growing up. But there are many more children like Rebecca who are still in need.

With your help WER can expand our feeding programmes so that more children can know the security of a simple daily meal.

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