Silver Spring, MarylandThe Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) is providing emergency food kits, mattresses, and bedding to nearly 3,000 people in Haiti after Hurricane Ike battered the country in early September, the latest in a series of deadly storms that destroyed homes, inundated cities, washed away roads, and left hundreds dead and thousands homeless.
ADRA Haiti is assisting 430 displaced families in Jacmel, a city located in southern Haiti. Each family will receive mattresses, bedding sets, and a food kit packed with enough rice, corn, beans, sugar, and oil to feed six people for more than three weeks. ADRA's latest response, worth $100,000, is funded by ADRA International, ADRA Canada, and the ADRA Inter-American regional office based in Miami, Florida. Food, water, hygiene items, clothing, mattresses, blankets, antibiotics and first aid items remain the greatest needs.
"ADRA has selected this region of Haiti to work, because the southern part of the country is one of the regions most affected by this storm," said Fritz Bissereth, country director for ADRA Haiti. In this region alone, more than 56,000 families were affected by the storm, with 15,000 displaced and some 23,000 houses destroyed or damaged.
ADRA Haiti's emergency response intervention will target displaced families in the most affected regions of Jacmel, including Bodouin, Pérédo, La Colline, Pasquette, Ridoré, Meyer, Dougé, Ste-Helene, and Jacquet.
"It is general public opinion that the country has experienced an economic and social setback of 10 years," said Bissereth. "Haiti is going through a complete humanitarian disaster and the ecological devastation that was already irreversible is only getting worse."
In response to the recent disasters, ADRA has already been involved in several emergency efforts, distributing hygiene and food kits to Hurricane Gustav survivors in the coastal town of Petit-Goave, 24 miles (38 km) southeast of capital city Port-au-Prince, providing food and hygiene kits for 1,026 families in the most affected regions of Les Cayes, Artibonite, Bodary, and Cap-Haïtien, and implementing a rice distribution project that benefited 3,417 families in various communities throughout the island. ADRA will also distribute clothing, kitchen utensils, and blankets to 430 vulnerable families in the most affected regions.
"The beneficiaries have reacted positively to our different interventions," said Bissereth, "but they have voiced a very strong concern that the relief efforts not remain simply a humanitarian assistance intervention, but that they should address long-term development and rehabilitation efforts as well."
The rehabilitation phase of ADRA Haiti's hurricane response will therefore help fishermen recover their livelihoods on the small Haitian island of Île à Vache, and will be complemented by an agricultural support and sanitation project in the town of Cabaret, as well as by a multi-departmental well project that will provide potable water in areas where clean drinking water is nearly impossible to access.
In 2008, Haiti has experienced an abnormally busy hurricane season, with tropical storms Fay and Gustav, and Hurricanes Hanna and Ike devastating the small island, leaving more than 420 dead, affecting 131,000 families, and displacing some 111,000 people, according to official estimates.
ADRA has been working in Haiti since 1975, gaining recognition throughout the country for its food programs and child survival projects. ADRA has also been active in Haiti in micro-credit programs that help to raise the long-term quality of life for beneficiaries.
To assist in ADRA's emergency response to the flooding in Haiti, contributions can be made to ADRA's Emergency Response Fund, by phone at 1.800.424.ADRA (2372) or online at www.adra.org.
ADRA is a non-governmental organization present in 125 countries providing sustainable community development and disaster relief without regard to political or religious association, age, gender, race or ethnicity.
Additional information about ADRA can be found at www.adra.org.
Author: Nadia McGill
Media Contact: John Torres, Senior Public Relations Manager, ADRA International 12501 Old Columbia Pike Silver Spring, MD 20904 Phone: 301.680.6357 E-mail: Media.Inquiries@adra.org
[ Any views expressed in this article are those of the writer and not of Reuters. ]
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