Haiti Orphan update 21 Jan

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Haiti Earthquake: Follow-up 20/21 January 2010 (received at 8 am CET; 2 am Haitian time)

After the serious aftershocks yesterday we reviewed the state of all of the infrastructure being used for the relief project.  No further damage was found, and plans on providing emergency safe child shelters in the school and village were not altered.

Delivery of food and materials

Another SOS Dominican Republic truck was loaded with construction supplies, medicines, water and food and will leave for Haiti in the morning of the 21 January in convoy with security protection. This shipment, which follows a shipment by air from Canada since the last road convoy will be used to supply the SOS Children’s Village in Santo as well as the community centres nearby, six of which have now restarted operations to support local families. The construction materials are to build a large operations camp with facilities needed for children in the temporary shelter (kitchen, toilets and dinning room) as well as housing for volunteers and so om. 

The admission of the children (temporary safe shelter)

The search for the children has start both in the more devastated areas and in cooperation with other organisations that are working in the field. The coordination with the other organisations was more fluid today. Tomorrow SOS Children will be participating in a meeting with the UN and the Interior Minister of Haiti to organise a better cooperation between the organisations working in the emergency relief activities. Our focus in approaching other NGOs is to speed up the identification of the children in need so we can execute a quick admission process into safe shelter.

We are expecting the first child into the safe shelter sometime today

Clinic on Playground

Issues between the Dominican Republic military and Haiti military have resulted in reports of the Dominican Republic soldiers being asked to leave. This means that the Dominican Republic’s Army plans to install a clinic on the football pitch in the SOS Children’s Village Santo have stalled. Therefore, our coordinator on the ground, Johann Denk made an offer to install the clinic to the Red Cross of Dominican Republic and the proposal was received with great enthusiasm. Therefore, we are back on track with a slight delay in getting an emergency hospital in place

Coordination and Management

Today we confirmed that a further 14 experienced SOS staff from South America will travel to support the EP both in Dominican Republic and Haiti next Monday.

We have established contact with the Rescue Team from the ICE (largest telecommunication company in Costa Rica) in Haiti and with a quick coordination of Patricia Vargas with the CEO (of ICE in Costa Rica), they allowed us use and keep their communication equipment for one month as a collaboration with SOS Children in the efforts to support the people of Haiti. Today (21 January) the setting up of the equipment will be done and we will see how it works. 

Personal contacts with Net Hope and Plan International were made during the day and these organisations have been added to the list who are working with us.