Haiti | ||||
CHECK OUT THE LATEST Resources! Thanksgiving in Haiti - Camille Brouillard, IHMHaiti: Seven Places Where the Money Did and Did Not Go After the Earthquake - By Bill Quigley and Anna Ramanauskas Fonkoze Webinar: Two Years After the Earthquake Haiti Earthquake Two Year Anniversary Report - CRS The Issue Haiti is the poorest nation in the western hemisphere. With 81% of the population earning less than one dollar a day, life is extremely harsh for the people of Haiti. Over half of Haiti's children suffer from malnutrition. Subsidized, imported food and food aid has eroded the profitability of local Haitian food production, driving many Haitian farmers out of business and leaving Haiti's population vulnerable to economic forces far beyond their control. This poverty is the result of, and continues to be exacerbated by, years of political unrest in the country. On January 12, 2010, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti and devastated the country. Although the exact number is difficult to determine, reportedly more than 230,000 people were killed and countless numbers of people remain homeless. Since that time, researchers found a previously unmapped fault was responsible for the earthquake and that the originally blamed fault remains ready to produce yet another large earthquake. These problems have been compounded by an outbreak of cholera and a resurgence of violence after Presidential elections in November 2010. Women in Haiti bear the brunt of these problems. More than 70% of Haiti's households are headed by women, often with little or no support from men. At the same time, it is women in Haiti who are key to change in the country. Women are the backbone of the Haitian economy, through their entrepreneurial efforts within the domestic economy. An example of this is Fonkoze, Haiti's highly successful bank for the organized poor. Fonkoze provides both financial and non-financial services to the rural poor in Haiti. Today, Fonkoze has more than 50,000 depositors and more than 25,000 micro-loan clients, 96% of whom are women. These women, all of whom live below the poverty level, have deposited over $4 million in savings and over $2.6 million in loans. Haitian women are making a difference in their country's economy as they struggle to pull themselves out of poverty. IHMs in Action
Sister Bears Witness to Haitian Struggles - by Michele Denton, IHM The Oblate/Tri-IHM Haiti Outreach Project Prayer/Reflection Materials "Thank You Haiti" - a prayer by Kathryn J. Hermes, FSP The IHM Sisters have created a prayer service to commemorate the anniversary of the earthquake in Haiti. The prayer service can be downloaded below both as a PDF and a Word Document. A large print version is also available. - Pax Christi USA "Braiding" - A poem excerpted from the film, "Poto Mitan: Haitian Women, Pillars of a Global community." Resources Learn More about Haiti - An annotated bibliography (PDF, 66 KB) Action
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