Demographic Served: Children available at ADRA (Adventist Development & Relief Agency) - 2010 Haiti Earthquake

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti—“The children are traumatized. We want to help them go back to being the way they were before the earthquake,” says Edna François, a staff member of the Post Trauma Program that the Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) launched in a camp for displaced Haitians in Port-au-Prince.

In a less frequented corner of the 20,000-person camp, ADRA set-up a child friendly space to provide children a place to play and interact safely with each other. The program, which is currently assisting approximately 1,200 children, has focused on the camp’s youngest residents, as most have received no post trauma assistance since the disaster and limited access to educational activities.

“They were like ants,” says Elcy Delly, a Haitian teacher working with ADRA, referring to the number of unattended children that were in the camp before the program began. “Because parents are busy during the day finding food, they lose track of their children. We’re trying to reintegrate them.”

At 8 o’clock in the morning from Monday to Thursday, children arrive from all over the camp to participate in the activities. In the camp itself there are more than 2,400 children between the ages of three to seventeen. Promptly, trained personnel—16 teachers and eight assistants—organize them in small groups of approximately 30, then guide each group through four interactive areas, including recreation, art, reading, and health education. The activities, which take place in two shifts of two hours each, include on average 250 children each morning.

In the reading area, a teacher shows the children an image from a book and asks, “How many legs does the wolf have?” She turns the pages and talks to the children to ensure she has their full attention. They also discuss the human body; she teaches them about the different parts through a song. “La bouche, voici la bouche. Le nez, voici le nez—The mouth, here’s the mouth. The nose, here’s the nose,” they sing in French, pointing with their fingers to their mouths and noses.

“This develops their minds,” says François, who has nine years of experience teaching kindergarten students.

While the program has only been in operation for a few days, the impact on children is starting to be noted.

“Now they’re beginning to speak,” adds Delly. “The first day they were stressed; they didn’t want to speak. It was as if they were fearful of something.”

One of those children is Lhynn, an 8-year-old girl who came to live in the camp with her mother just hours after the earthquake struck and partially damaged their house. The January 12 quake came to her as a second blow in just as many months. One morning in November her father went jogging in the neighborhood and didn’t come back. When her mother went looking for him, she found him sitting on the ground near the house, dying.

“Because she suddenly lost her father, I brought her here to be with other children to share her grief,” says Lhynn’s mother. “That will help her deal with the loss, not completely, but it will help.” She adds, “She was very close to her father.”

The combination of her father’s death and, two months later, the deadly earthquake caused great anxiety to Lhynn. She didn’t understand why he would die so meaninglessly while they could survive such a terrible disaster unharmed.

“After the death of her father,” says her mother, “I told her that he’s sleeping in the arms of Jesus. I told her that only God knows why he left first.”

Lhynn also didn’t want to sit idly, especially since school had been closed indefinitely. She asked her mother for help.

“I want to read and do activities,” her mother recalls Lhynn saying. So she accompanied her daughter to the program.

“It is very important for the children who have suffered the effects of the seism to be able to have a space where they can express themselves, socialize, and develop the values that will help in their healing,” says Patricia Müller, coordinator of ADRA’s Post Trauma Program.

Since its launch, the program has become very popular in the camp and among the children.

“They make a lot of friends here,” adds François. “Some children say, ‘I want to return to the tent.’ They find that this is a safe place.”

The activities have also helped provide a way for teachers to be hopeful and stay busy, as they have not been able to return to work because schools have been destroyed or remain closed.

“I was also stressed. My heart was sad,” says Delly, “but working with the children I was able to relax. I found my place again.”

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