FriendsOfTheOrphans

• Father Wasson Angels of Light Program: Outreach program for vulnerable and displaced children due to the earthquake. We have identified and are helping more than 2,000 on a daily basis, providing a day camp for those from tent cities, large scale food distribution to tent cities, a transition center for displaced children, comprehensive medical services and educational opportunities. 
• Shipping Container Transformation: Currently, we are transforming shipping containers formerly used to transport supplies into fully-functional hospital rooms on the site of St. Damien’s Hospital. This allows us to help not just children, but adults in need of medical care as well. These structures will eventually become permanent. 
• Continuing Life Saving After-Care: Many treated immediately following the earthquake are now in need of additional follow-up surgeries, prosthetics and medical treatment. We are focusing on the long-term care of both adults and children. 
• St. Damien’s Hospital Repair: Making significant repairs to perimeter walls, tower, chapel, hospital walls and infrastructure so it can continue serving as the country’s only free pediatric facility treating thousands each year.
• Father Wasson Baby House: Facility designed to treat those newborn through age 6 and provide necessary care and medical attention.

FUTURE INITIATIVES:

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Update June 18, 2010 
Strategy for Vulnerable Children
Reinhart Koehler, Director of Family Services, NPH International 

In the past, NPHI frequently has been asked why we have not accepted a large number of orphaned and abandoned children who were victims from the massive earthquake on January 12, 2010 in Haiti. In fact, NPFS began immediately to respond to the tragedy through various crucial relief efforts, saving many lives especially in the first days after the quake.

While the initial emergency response in trying to rescue trapped people from rubble and providing medical care was still the primary focus, NPFS, with support from NPHI, began to explore how to best help the many displaced and vulnerable children that resulted from the earthquake. To this day, estimates on how many children became partially or fully orphaned vary greatly. However, it is clear that there is an overwhelming need for care for this population.

The main challenge is to establish which children are truly orphaned, which have an extended family with whom they could be placed, and which are children for whose care NPH is not suited (street children, children who escaped jail during the earthquake etc.). Also, in light of international child trafficking NPFS staff needs to be very careful to work closely with the local authorities. This slows down the whole process of identifying children as the local authorities are overwhelmed by the current situation.

The approach NPFS chose was to begin to work with the children of different camps and shelter areas where families who lost their homes found temporary refuge. In the course of a very short time, Alfonso Leon from NPH International Family Services, together with over 100 youth, many of whom are former pequeños and pequeños, organized the Father Wasson’s Angels of Light (FWAL) Program. FWAL serves almost 2,000 children daily at the onsite day camp established on the St. Luke soccer field next to the St. Damien Hospital and in other tent cities located throughout the Port-au-Price area. Through the FWAL program, the children receive food, medical care, and participate in educational and recreational activities. By serving vulnerable and displaced children, NPSF has come to know the children and their background, identifying more and more orphaned and abandoned children. Some, who had no place to go, began living at the FWAL camp.

In short, instead of accepting children without much knowledge about them and their background, NPFS proceeded to:

• Befriend and get to know the children in order to identify those whom NPFS can help by bringing them into a home.
• Serve and support them in the place they are living.
• Develop a long-term strategy for how to assist displaced and vulnerable children left in the wake of the earthquake.