Haitian Orphanages - A Woeful Refuge

The following journal is presented here from The New York Times: World. The pictures below are clickable to view in a larger format.

Since the earthquake, chronic problems -- like inadequate services and overwhelming poverty -- have
only intensified.

Many of the orphanages are barely habitable, much less licensed. They have no means to provide real schooling or basic medical care, so children spend their days engaged in mindless activities, and many die
from treatable illnesses. Doussous Christophane, 18, is H.I.V. positive.

Most of the children in the orphanages, the authorities said, are not orphans, but children whose parents are unable to provide for them.

Nikah, who is 2 months old, is severely malnourished. She was brought in by her mother, who could not take care of her.

It took the arrest of 10 Americans caught trying to leave the country with 33 Haitian children to focus international attention on the issue. Sheshier Regilus, 13, with his sister at a children's center in Port-au-Prince. They were among the 33 children. See (*) below.

Ketty Leonor, 30, had little money to subsist on and offered her children to an orphanage. One of her sons played in his neighborhood outside of Port-au-Prince.

The orphanage offered instead to help feed Ms. Leonor and her children.

A woman tended to a baby recently at the Foyer of Zion orphanage, whose staff members care for more than 60 children who range in age from 2 months to 10 years old. To desperate parents, the orphanage is a godsend, a temporary solution to help a child survive a particularly tough economic stretch.

While there is no evidence that the Americans, who said they were trying to rescue children, intended any harm, the ease with which they scooped up a busload of children exposed vast gaps in the system's safeguards. The 33 children were brought for care to a center run by SOS Children's Villages, which provides services to abandoned children around the world.

Haitian children prepared to eat dinner recently at the Foyer of Patience orphanage in Port-au-Prince. Foyer of Patience is like hundreds of places that pass as orphanages for thousands of children in the poorest country in the hemisphere.

A solution, child protection advocates say, lies as much in fixing families as in fixing orphanages. Lomene Nerisier begged an orphanage in the village to take her children after her husband kicked them out. The orphanage's director offered Ms. Nerisier a job instead. Three years later, she not only takes care of her own children, but she also teaches preschool.

At the Foyer of Zion orphanage, children live in airy, cheerfully decorated rooms. Still, on a recent visit, it was woefully understaffed and poorly equipped. Children in the nursery were kept in stacked wooden boxes rather than cribs.

*Update note: 18 March 2010

NBC news verified that zero of the 33 children gathered up by American 'missionaries' were actual orphans--all 33 have been reunited with their Haiti families. Foyer de Sion (House of Zion) is the orphanage designated to receive the Villager. Read more here...

*Updates from 22 March 2010

Aid workers in Haiti have sent home all but one of the 33 children that US missionaries tried to take out of the country after the January earthquake. They said all the children had parents to return to. Each family was given food, blankets and $260 (£170) as they came to collect their children. Some of the parents said they had handed them over because they thought they would get better care in US hands. One of the missionaries remains in jail while the other nine were freed. One child is still waiting at the SOS Orphanage on Port-au-Prince's outskirts for further verification of her parents' identities.

Family reunions - The missionaries, who were arrested on 29 January while trying to leave Haiti after the devastating earthquake with the children, denied any wrongdoing, saying they only wanted to help destitute orphans. Their leader, Laura Silsby, remains in custody. The earthquake in Haiti on 12 January killed more than 220,000 people and left more than a million homeless. Florence Avrilier was reunited with her eight-year-old son she had given away. She kept her 12-year-old daughter because the missionaries told her they only wanted children younger than 10, she is quoted as saying by the Associated Press news agency. "I'm very happy. I had no hope I would ever get my son back again. This has been a very heartbreaking time for me," she said.