Haiti - The friendship and support from Sant’Egidio continues four years after the earthquake

Four years have passed after the earthquake that stroke Haiti in 2010, and life is still very difficult for the people of the island.

The Community of Sant'Egidio intervened immediately with emergency aid, and continues not to abandon the Haitians, especially the children and the elderly.

An example: the house where 16 children who lost everyone and everything four years ago live

now like in a new family. The “Children's Home of the Sant’Egidio Community”, opened after the earthquake, is a welcoming place for kids aged from four to ten years old. They find over there the love to make the wounds of the past be healed and the possibility to grow with a new hope. Everyone goes to school (the youngest girl to the kindergarten) and with good results. 

Another example: in a “village” in Port au Prince some old people live together thanks to the support of several willing Italian elderly Community members. So it was even before the earthquake, a story of a network across the ocean in favor of elderly who were living on the street and counting on no one. But with the terrible earthquake of January 2010, when the poor

home that housed those elderly was damaged, the support coming from Italy, from the movement “Long Live the Elderly!”, became more and more close and effective. It was so possible to build, in a short time, small and comfortable houses for two or four people each, a true village of restored hope, the village of life overcoming the earthquake.