ChildFund Helps Relief Efforts for Children in Haiti
Richmond, Va. – Jan. 15, 2010 –In the aftermath of natural disasters, children’s physical and emotional needs often go unattended as adults struggle to survive.
“We stand in solidarity with our sister organizations now helping with the Haiti rescue efforts and the subsequent recovery operations that will be required,” says Anne Lynam Goddard, president and CEO of ChildFund International.
To meet the needs of vulnerable children, ChildFund has committed to directing funds raised for Haiti to a partner on the ground. ChildFund is especially concerned with child protection and keeping children at the center of recovery efforts and rebuilding.
ChildFund has extensive experience responding to the emergency and recovery needs of the most vulnerable children in crisis situations. “In this situation, our first concern is assisting Haiti’s children,” says Goddard.
More than 3 million people - about a third of Haiti's population - had been affected by the earthquake, many of them children. Haiti is by a significant margin, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, with four out of five people living in poverty and more than half in abject poverty.
“We know that even before this disaster children in Haiti were deprived of basic necessities, education and safety,” says Dula James, ChildFund’s vice president of the Americas Region, who was a director for one of the leading international humanitarian organizations in Haiti before joining ChildFund.
Our priorities in the wake of disasters are to minimize the chaos and setbacks to children’s development that emergencies bring and to support them in significant ways, so that in the aftermath of disaster, when the worst is over, infants are healthy and secure, children are educated and confident, and youth are skilled and involved.