March 23, 2010 - Over two days the team worked with more than 400 children, helping them cope with the earthquake. Child trauma counselors, spiritual counselors and teachers who work with younger children teamed together to identify children who might need additional help.
Sleeping in tents, bathing in a river and being surrounded by children 18 hours a day are but a part of the experiance. Check out Katie Cotten's blog for up-to-date information.
Last Updated ( Thursday, 25 March 2010 13:59 )
Back to School
All of the Star of Hope Schools are back to meeting in Haiti. Due to collapsed and damaged buildings, most schools in tents or under palm leaves. Star of Hope is once again providing one meal per day to students that arrive at school, because of this many schools have received new students.
At Star of Hope's school called Dano that is located in the Southern part of the country has increased in number of children by 100 new children. This is because many families who lived in Port-au-Prince have moved to the village after the earthquake.
The Dano school has the majority of school building still standing, the part that collapsed will be reconstructed to be more secure and better equipped. It is expected to begin removing the barriers that raged within a week. To be able to provide school lunches to children, Dano school built a temporary kitchen that was up and running March 15.
Just outside the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince is the suburb of Carrefour, home to almost 400 000 people. Most are extremely poor and many have moved here from rural areas without any proper training. Man survives by scavenging, small-scale sales and simpler time job.
Star of Hope supports one an orphanage for 125 children in Carrefour, Maison d'enfants par la Foi. Most of the children are orphans; others have been abandoned by their parents because of poverty. At the orphanage the children are protection and cared for by dedicated and loving staff. They receive an education as well. A big issue just now is clean water, buying bottled water is extremely expensive and to drink the "municipal" carries associated health risks. The 125 children at the orphanage are frequently affected by diseases due to contaminated water. In order to stop it - once and for all - Star of Hope wants to purchase a mobile water purification equipment for the orphanage.
The machine is a Modular 1500-AC and can clean 1.5 cubic meters of water per hour. There are more than enough for the orphanage. The idea is to sell the surplus of purified water in the neighbourhood at cost so that the operation of sewage treatment plant does not cost anything orphanage.
Last Updated ( Wednesday, 03 February 2010 15:23 )
Back to school
Back to School for some of our kids
Several of the schools that Star of Hope supports in Haiti have again started with classes. Among others, the school next to Star of Hope orphanage in Carrefour is started. The school is run by the same organization as the orphanage and is open to preschool children up to sixth grade. Here is a place for about 125 homeless children but also a place for hundreds of children from the area around the school.
For children, it means very much to be able to get back to a somewhat normal routine again. When life more or less collapsed around them, the school continues to be a safe place. The teachers even help the children with the psychosocial stress. Allowing the children get an opportunity to share with us and to tell you about what happened and how they are affected is good medicine. For smaller children, who may find it difficult to put into words what happened, it means a simple paper and some crayons for a lot of drawings. For children, it is also extremely important to play and have fun again, even to get going again with the alphabet and multiplication tables, many things can be healing thing in a situation that is too difficult and too horrible to fully absorb and understand.
In other places, where the school building collapsed, we are working with our teachers to enable children to be outdoors and play games even to be on excursions and again try to as quickly as possible to return the kids to normal routines.
Last Monday, the first tent school was flown to Haiti. The tents will be vital during the rebuilding period for use as school and social centre.
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At 9:10 this morning a USMC 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit helicopter landed at the Star of Hope school in Dano, Haiti. The are bringing approximately 7,000 individual meals, medical supplies todeal with wound care and other items needed.
The marines are off loading the helicopter that landed 300 yards from the school. The marines were meet by Star of Hope representatives and the local community committee who had already made the prepartions tomove the materials from the landing site to the school site for the distribution.
Star of Hope teams and colaborates with other organizations and missions to foster the help that reaches the people. The marine unit has operational responsibility for the relief aid in the area where we have four projects all affected by the quake. They have asked for information about the remaining communities where Star of Hope works and we anticipate further joint actions to get the help to those who need it.
This help means that more of your donation will be able to go into the rebuilding phase of our disaster response. This photo is a stock photo but it is likely exactly what is happening right now.
U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Ryan Steinhour/Released
