Five Years after the Haiti Earthquake

Haiti Earthquake, Five Years Later
Food For The Poor Remains Persistent in the Recovery Effort

	Food For The Poor has built 5,015 permanent two-room concrete block homes with water and sanitation components, providing more than 30,000 earthquake survivors with a safe and secure place to live outside of Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
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COCONUT CREEK, Fla. (Jan. 7, 2015)

Food For The Poor, which began working in Haiti in 1986, promised to remain with the people of Haiti on their long road to recovery after the January 2010 earthquake – and the charity is living up to that commitment.

Since the 7.0 magnitude earthquake, Food For The Poor has:

• Built 5,015 permanent two-room concrete block homes with water and sanitation components, providing more than 30,000 people with a safe and secure place to live. An average Haiti household consists of six family members.
• Installed 90 water filtration units that purify 900,000 gallons of clean water a day, which equates to 180,000 individuals who now have access to clean water.
• Drilled 372 wells and pumps, providing more than 1.1 million people with clean water each day.
• Built or restored 35 schools in the Port-au-Prince area, which have an enrollment of 12,173 students.
• Shipped 5,098 containers, which include rice, sardines, beans, rice/soy meals, medicine, medical supplies, school and dorm furniture, tile, shoes, hygiene items, household items, cleaning supplies, and construction supplies.

 “The fifth anniversary of the earthquake should serve as a reminder of the sheer will of the human spirit to survive. The people of Haiti have had their share of natural disasters, yet they refuse to give up. And this organization will not give up on them,” said Robin Mahfood, President/CEO of Food For The Poor. “The rebuilding of Haiti is not going to be a quick fix, so we will continue on our path, which is to help one family and one village at a time.”

At 4:53 p.m. on Jan. 12, 2010, a sudden shift in a fault triggered a catastrophic 7.0 magnitude earthquake near Haiti’s bustling capital of Port-au-Prince. More than 250,000 people were killed that day and an estimated 1.3 million were left homeless.

According to the International Organization for Migration, 92 percent of the displaced have left the camps in Haiti. As of June 2014, there were more than 103,500 people living in 172 camps scattered throughout the Port-au-Prince region. Helping people to get out of the dangerous conditions of living in tent cities remains a priority of Food For The Poor, as it helps families to renew their lives.

Click www.FoodForThePoor.org/earthquakevideo to watch a video about some of the projects Food For The Poor has implemented in Haiti in the five years since the earthquake struck.

Food For The Poor, named by The Chronicle of Philanthropy as the largest international relief and development organization in the nation, does much more than feed millions of the hungry poor in 17 countries of the Caribbean and Latin America. This interdenominational Christian ministry provides emergency relief assistance, clean water, medicines, educational materials, homes, support for orphans and the aged, skills training and micro-enterprise development assistance, with more than 95 percent of all donations going directly to programs that help the poor. For more information, please visit www.FoodForThePoor.org.