Reports from Haiti

Sadly, one third of the children in Haiti have Vitamin A Deficiency (VAD).  VAD diminishes the immune system’s ability to fight infections, contributes to maternal mortality, and if severe enough, can cause permanent blindness. Next week, we are transporting enough vitamin A to help over 21,000 Haitian children.

Last month, Father Dessalines of the St. Claire parish in Dessalines, Haiti approached International Action seeking our help. There are 150,000 people in four villages in the Artibonite Valley that need clean water. We have met with Father Dessalines and we will begin installing chlorinators in early 2013. 

Hurricane Sandy has swept through Cuba, Jamaica, and Haiti. Government officials in Haiti are still assessing the damages caused by Sandy. The Hurricane comes on the heels of Tropical Storm Isaac, which killed 24 Haitians and forced many to abandon their homes temporarily.

International Action has the complete support of Denis O-Brien, the founder of Digicel and the Chairman of the Clinton Global Initiative's Haiti Action Network. In a letter to the Director of DINEPA, Haiti's water agency, Mr. O'Brien clearly states his unwavering support for International Action's efforts to help nearly 1,000,000  gain access to clean water.

International Action is trucking water all day long to bring clean, safe water to Haitians displaced by Tropical Storm Isaac. Your support is urgently needed to help us continue our water trucking efforts.

A month and a half of hard work has yielded substantial results in the Southeast. 65,775 Haitian Southeast residents and students now have clean water because of our work over the past month and a half. That means that a total of 108,215 people are drinking clean water every day in the Southeast thanks to the hard work of community and school leaders, our staff, and you. 

The progress of the Southeast Water Project continues. Working with DINPEA (the Haitian Water Agency), International Action has installed chlorinators, water tanks, and water pumps at 5 more schools. Three of these schools are the educational homes of more than 2,000 children each. These schools need a lot of water.

We have been championing cooperation among NGOs for some time in Haiti; it is a necessity to work with Haitian communities and other NGOs to make lasting change in Haiti. Cooperation has been built into our work in Haiti from the beginning. For every chlorinator we have installed, we coordinated with the involved Haitian community, DINEPA, and often with other NGOs. We then took this model of cooperation to our Cholera Prevention Consortium last year, in which International Action and 35 different groups disbursed chlorine to over 400,000 Haitians.

Many water stations in Port-au-Prince are not open at night, because it has not been safe to keep them open. The neighborhoods in Haiti are without street lights, they have no light. It is not safe for women and children and to walk alone. Our new street lights make it safe for women and children to access the water they need at night. We have now brought 10 solar street lights to Haiti.

International Action installed a 150-gallon tank and chlorinator at Collège les Quatre Evangelistes, a school located in the Sud-Est city of Marigot (just outside Jacmel). Now, 103 students, their families, and nearby residents in the neighborhood have access to clean, safe water.