In January 12, 2010 a deadly and devastated earthquake hit Haiti which was already the poorest in the western hemisphere. More than 100,000 died and thousands were injured. The capital, with buildings made mostly of cement blocks, was severely damaged, and more than a million people are still living in tent. People of Haiti have shown a lot of patience, but there are few jobs and few social services. Thousands have died from cholera. After the earthquake in Haiti there was a global outpouring of support, but there are still more works to be done. Reconstruction has barely begun. A 7.0 - magnitude quake - the biggest recorded in this part of the caribbean, and the largest to hit Haiti in more than 200 years, rocked Port-au-Prince, hundreds of thousands have lost their lives, and left behind starving children like never before. As children are starving in Haiti, some mothers choose what their children will eat. Others choose which children will eat and which will die. The majority of Haitian Population, specially children are so desperate for food. It's horrible to know that sometimes mothers have to choose among their children.

 

As a non-profit organization, we are trying tirelessly to keep those children alive by feeding them, but sometimes we have to turn hundreds away due to lack of ressources and devoted partners. A child dies of hunger every six seconds, and hunger now kills more people every year than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined. Christian Outreach World Mission think hunger can be conquered, it just takes the will and participation to do it. Haiti has extremely poor health indices. The life expectancy at birth is 61 years. An estimated 87 of every 1,000 children born die by the age of 5 years, and 25% of surviving children experience chronic undernutrition or stunted growth. More than half of the Haitian Population doesn't have access to health care because of poverty and a shortage of health care professionals ( 1 Physician and 1.8 Nurses per 10,000 population), and only one fourth of seriously ill person are taken to a health care facility. Before the earthquake hit Haiti in January 2010, less than 63% of Haiti's Population had access to improved drinking water source.

 

Street Children: In this small nation ravaged by poverty, children and teens make up 45% of the total population and are often the first ones to suffer. Thousands of orphans and children from poor families are driven to the streets to sleep, beg for food, and find petty jobs to survive. Some of them find temporary refuge in group homes, where non-profit organization like ours can meet them and try to help them. The estimate on the number of street children in Haiti vary from 5,000 to 10,000. Street children in Port-au-Prince included many restaveks who were dismissed, from or fled employers' homes. Many restaveks children who flee servitude end up among those street children working odd jobs or begging to survive. Through direct observation and based on investigations led by certain charitable institutions, four children out of eight confess their addiction to narcotics or dope: Cocaine, marijuana, glue used by shoemakers etc. In a country like Haiti where poverty is common, it is no wonder that thousands of children have made the street their home. Once there, they are  forced to beg, prostitute themselves and land in prison, suffer from malnutrition and pick up infectious diseases such as STDs. 

 

Orphan in Haiti: in a nation of 8.5 million, orphanages often are the last refuge of hope. Some 610,000 Haitian Children are Orphans, Port-au-Prince alone has an estimate of 10,000 street children many of them orphans.  Port-au-Prince was home to a considerable orphan population before the earthquake. Thus, some children have been placed in orphanages because their parents had died, many others are brought to orphanages by their families because disease or poverty left them unable to care for their children. The number of unwanted children is sure to skyrocket as thousands of haitian parents come to grip with being stripped of the few ressources they had. Orphans in Haiti are being offered for sale to foreigners. In a remote area north of Port-au-Prince, a man was reported to have offered to sell a young boy to a canadian man for just $ 50. The first confirmed case of a child being offered for sale since Haiti was devastated by a 7.0 magnitude earthquake on January 12, 2010 took place near Gonaives, 150 km north of Port-au-Prince. 

 

Quick Facts:  An estimated 189,000 children in Haiti have lost either their mother or both parents. More than 200,000 in Haiti have lost one or both parents to AIDS. Nearly 20% of children under age 5 are severely malnourished. At Christian Outreach World Mission, orphans or neglected kids should be able to have a christian family home where they can experience at first-hand a true love that they have never been had before. We are providing them with a well nutritious meal daily while we ought to give them the medical care that they need and so forth.

 

Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the western hemisphere - More than half its inhabitants survive on less than $1 per day.

Every year, an estimated 38,000 children under the age of five die - almost one out of three because of malnutrition.

The situation is particularly serious in the remote village. Haiti hunger that burn in the belly of its children that so many feels, has become fiercer than ever in recent days as global food prices spiral out of reach.

 

Haiti has long struggled with malnutrition as a result of wide spread poverty, and a feeble agricultural sector.

According to expert, Malnutrition is responsible for about 60 percent of all deaths in people under 18 in the country.

 

 

 1 billion people in the world live on less than $1 a day.