Concern Blogs

A soccer stadium just four months ago, this tent settlement at Place de la Paix in Port-au-Prince is now home to 8,000 people.

By Mark Jafar – Vice President of Corporate Communications at MTV Networks – for Concern Worldwide

Walk around the edges of the sunken tent settlement at Place de la Paix in Port-au-Prince, and it’s nearly impossible to tell that this was a soccer stadium just four months ago.

The grass is gone entirely, replaced by bare earth and debris.  There are no goal nets or benches, just shelters made of tarp, cardboard, and rusted scraps of sheet metal.

And where kids and adults once gathered to watch soccer matches or to kick a ball across the field, an estimated 8,000 displaced people are now living in shocking, unsanitary, overcrowded conditions, often with nothing but a few pieces of plastic sheeting to shelter them from the rains, which are heavy this time of year. Read the rest of this entry »

Concern paves the way for the newly built settlement in Tabarre Issa, which can accomodate more than 500 families. Photo: Haiti, Concern Worldwide

By Mark Jafar – Vice President of Corporate Communications at MTV Networks. Mark is currently visiting Concern’s emergency operation in Haiti.

Bourdon Valley, Port-au-Prince – Tucked into the hills that rise above central Port-au-Prince lies Bourdon Valley, an enclave of beautiful, verdant forest flanked by the eastern suburbs of Delmas and Canape Vert.

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Mother and Child participating in Concern's CMAM program in Haiti

As I walk from crib to crib in the hospital, not trusting myself to speak for fear I will cry, I think of my own two girls, and how by a twist of fate they could be lying in one of these beds – hooked to an IV – being fed milk from a cup.  I spent just 48 hours in Haiti, but this was my far the single most difficult. Read the rest of this entry »