Haiti earthquake update 20 Jan

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This is the 20 Jan update on our situation in Haiti

We are continuing helping with the search and rescue and other operations in any way we can. Our rescue team is identifying the first children without parental care. These children will be entrusted to us in the short term while the best solutions are found and families are traced.The SOS school (pictures just after the earthquake) is being fitted out for the temporary care of 300 lone children, and extra children will be admitted into our Village. We have organised a construction team in the Dominican republic to start the School refit immediately. We are recruiting retired SOS mothers and other personnel qualified to care for the children in this temporary shelter.

The Santo Village is still calm, but everyone is still scared to enter even structurally sound buildings and mothers and children are sleeping on the doorsteps of houses out of fear.

Today six of our sixteen community centres will restart operation in Santo as centres of distribution for the delivery of food to the most desperate children and the families in these communities. We are still trying to trace staff and locations to set up the remaining ten centres in operation.

The next trucks with relief supplies will be departing at the end of this week from the Dominican Republic. Today, a shipment by air with aid supplies, including medicines, equipment such as compressors, and tents from SOS Children in Canada has arrived and we have started building a camp to house emergency workers.