wfn.org | Church World Service Turns Attention to Children in Haiti

[Worldwide Faith News <wfn@igc.org>]

In Port Au Prince, Church World Service Turns Attention to Children,
Disabled in Haiti, Expedites Med Supplies

Local Haitian agency's offices destroyed, years' work 'feels like a
victim of the disaster'

EDITORS, PRODUCERS: CWS's Don Tatlock in Port au Prince available for
interview, Martin Coria in Dominican Republic, and CWS CEO John
McCullough from New York

High def video b-roll will be available in coming days, by request

PORT AU PRINCE, HAITI -- JAN. 20, 2010 -- Following this morning's 6.0
aftershock in quake-decimated Port au Prince, Haiti, Church World
Service staff on the ground continue to expedite emergency aid to those
in need while also turning attention to vulnerable children and people
with disabilities. Emergency hygiene and baby care kits and blankets now
are being distributed.

With ocean shipping schedules backed up, the agency quickly diverted
part of a 40-foot container shipment of emergency kits scheduled to
leave tonight."

"We've also scheduled an air shipment on Thursday (January 21) of
medicine boxes given the ongoing desperate medical needs of survivors,"
says CWS Disaster Response Program Director Donna Derr from the agency's
headquarters in New York. "As soon as they arrive in Port au Prince,
we'll provide some of those to our long-time local partner Service
Chrétien (SKDE), who manages a small clinic there.

Each IMA (Interchurch Medical Assistance) medicine box contains enough
essential medicines and medical supplies to treat the routine ailments
of about 1,000 adults and children. Medical responders and the few
clinics now operating are crying out for more supplies, where even
aspirin in scarce and shipments of medicines and supplies are in stasis
at the airport or waiting on ships.

> Trauma care team arriving

Now in Port au Prince, CWS's Don Tatlock reports that three trauma
counselors and psycho-social care specialists already have arrived to
provide services for individuals, especially children and aid workers
who also are suffering in the wake of the death, injuries, loss and
tragedy, of a disaster as great as the Asian tsunami and Hurricane
Katrina. CWS's local partners are carrying their own losses and the
setbacks to their work on the island around in their hearts even as they
help others.

"Today, we accompanied Ernst Abraham to the Service Chretien d'Haiti
offices which were destroyed.  It was very emotionally wrenching as he
talked about the programs they had worked so hard to build, such as
projects to serve those with disabilities, and how the momentum of those
initiatives and all that had been accomplished over the last years felt
like a victim of this disaster as well."

Church World Service, which has issued a national appeal for cash
donations and contributions of CWS hygiene and baby care kits, first
began work in Haiti in 1964. The agency works with local Haitian
partners to provide development and agriculture assistance and response
to disasters like the brutal hurricanes of recent years.

The CWS team, working in Port au Prince and from a coordination center
in the Dominican Republic, plans to obtain food from markets in Haiti,
if possible, but all other items will definitely need to come in from
outside, said CWS's Martin Coria.  A collection center for water, food
and clothes--to be distributed by churches in Haiti--has been set up on
the Dominican Republic border, says Coria, who directs the agency's work
in Latin America and the Caribbean.

CWS serving needs of Haitian migrants, monitoring issues
Church World Service is "closely monitoring developments in the
displacement of Haitians from Port au Prince and the social and legal
challenges to Haitian immigrants living in the United States," said
Erol Kekic, director of the agency's immigration and refugee program.

The CWS Miami Office and 17 Board of Immigration Appeals-recognized CWS
affiliate offices across the United States are prepared to provide
immigration legal services and assistance with applications for
Temporary Protected Status, which has just been extended to Haitians.
The well-established Cuban/Haitian Program based in the CWS Miami Office
is ready to respond to the needs of any new arrivals from Haiti, even as
it continues to serve the Haitian-American community through its Refugee
Youth and Family Program in Miami and its Haitian Family Services
Program in Palm Beach.

Since its founding in 1946, CWS has helped refugees resettle to the
United States and is a long-time advocate for and provider of social and
legal assistance to refugees, asylum seekers and other immigrants.  The
agency also supports programs elsewhere in the world for populations
displaced by conflict and disaster.

For further information on the CWS response in Haiti, visit:
www.churchworldservice.org .

HOW TO HELP: Contributions to support Church World Service emergency
response and recovery efforts may be made online; by phone: (800)
297-1516; or sent to Church World Service, P.O. Box 968, Elkhart, IN
46515.

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