Haiti: Relief and Recovery - imported from blogs.oxfam.org

Working with communities to rebuild Haiti

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 05:59:00 -0700

Oxfam continues to work closely with Haitian communities in the aftermath of January’s devastating earthquake. Marcel Stoessel reflects on achievements so far.

Water arrives at Impasse Fouget

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 08:35:00 -0800

Oxfam humanitarian response specialist Kenny Rae is currently in Haiti working on the recovery effort. Here’s his latest blog from Port-au-Prince.

Haiti: the healing has begun

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 09:08:00 -0800

Raymond C. Offenheiser, Oxfam America’s president, recounts his impressions of the ravaged Haitian capital after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck the city leaving 230,000 people dead and more than one million others homeless.

Haiti: Lots of priorities, little time

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 08:20:00 -0800

It’s my first week back in Port-au-Prince after a respite in Boston. Last night was uncomfortable; not physically, as the tent is now packed away and I’m sharing a room in a down-at-heel hotel on a hill distantly overlooking the harbor. But listening to the rain, I knew that my conditions were luxurious compared to tens of thousands of families below in the city.

The foreign aid worker’s conundrum

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 03:00:00 -0800

Alexandros Yiannopoulos, Oxfam’s coordinator of food security and livelihoods in Haiti, is blogging for Channel 4 News Online.It is a strange life being a Humanitarian worker.

With rain, urgency grows for shelter and sanitation in Haiti's capital

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 03:26:00 -0800

Late last week, rain doused the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, heightening the dread of hundreds of thousands of people there who have been living in makeshift shelters since a massive earthquake destroyed great swaths of their city in January.

Time to think big in Haiti

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 03:00:00 -0800

Alexandros Yiannopoulos, Oxfam’s coordinator of food security and livelihood in Haiti, is blogging for Channel 4 News Online.It is now time to think big. Three weeks in we have a plan, good people in place and now we have to try to achieve one of the largest projects that I have ever managed, if not one of the largest Oxfam projects since the Tsunami.

Haiti's debt – your voice has made a difference

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 03:02:00 -0800

Just over a week ago worldwide coalition of organisations, including Oxfam, launched a campaign to help Haiti’s long-term recovery from the terrible earthquake that has devastated the country.With your support we wanted persuade the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the international community to cancel Haiti's debt, which before the earthquake stood at a staggering $890 million dollars.

Haiti: We're all filling the cracks

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 03:25:00 -0800

At 5.10am one morning I woke to what was not someone kicking my bed, it just felt like it. I leapt up with a start. These strong aftershocks continue to get me jumping around. Afterwards I lay outside watching the bright night stars fade into the daylight, I did not want to be inside the house.By 6.45am the first members of the team are ready to drive down to the office. We currently have over 40 people who have come to work on the response, sleeping in our house and garden, so organizing transport for everyone is a huge task.

Helping those in need

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 08:30:00 -0800

There’s an air of frenzied activity as I enter the warehouse Oxfam shares with others in Haiti’s most notorious crime-ridden neighbourhood, Cité-Soleil.Men and women are working furiously, assembly-line fashion, putting together “family kits” – containing basic hygiene and kitchen items – to distribute to 10,000 households. The kits consist of brightly coloured plastic bowls, plates, kitchen utensils, together with cups, towels, soap, shampoo, toothbrushes and toothpaste.

Willing workers, few jobs

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 05:21:00 -0800

Oxfam America’s Coco McCabe is Haiti to help with the relief effort. Here’s her latest update, dated January 26.“In Haiti, it’s about hustling.”That’s Wilgens Jean-Baptiste’s summary of the job scene in the western hemisphere’s poorest nation: a constant scramble to do whatever you can to put food on the table for your family.read more

Before we had no water, no soap

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 07:16:00 -0800

It was a relief to read the sign on the wall: no dead bodies after 3.30 pm. My watch showed it was 4pm. Thankfully, when I poked my head into the morgue at the Hôpital Universitē de l’Ētat de Haiti, also known as the General Hospital, the room was empty.Outside, though, the ground was grimly sticky underfoot – a reminder of how many bodies had been taken to the public morgue for disposal since the earthquake that struck Haiti nearly two weeks ago.

Moving forward, one street at a time

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 07:37:00 -0800

Oxfam’s Coco McCabe is in Haiti to help with the relief effort, where she joins 200 Oxfam staff already on the ground.Each day since we’ve been here in the collapsed Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, the traffic has grown worse–a reality that is both good and bad. Life is slowly coming back in this battered city after a massive earthquake 10 days ago.People are on the move in any vehicle that still rolls and isn’t buried under a heap of rubble. And that’s a good thing: there’s a vibrancy here that is irrepressible.

Helen Hawkings: Diary from Haiti, part 2

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 13:34:00 -0800

Saturday 16th January Today we were back at the golf course, previously an exclusive area for the rich of Port au Prince, it is now home to an estimated 10 – 15,000 people during the day and 50,000 at night. Our mission for the day is to start distributing water. read more

Helen Hawkings: My Story From the Earthquake

Sun, 17 Jan 2010 06:17:00 -0800

January 12

Crossing the border towards Haiti

Fri, 15 Jan 2010 11:27:00 -0800

After spending all day posting and tweeting the latest Haiti earthquake images and updates, I was about to shut down my computer... when I received this blog from Juan Ramón Duarte, our Regional Information Systems Manager for Latin America and the Caribbean, who is based in Mexico. So I leave you for the weekend with his moving entry: