It’s been more than a year since the earth shook and turned Haiti upside down on Jan. 12, 2010, killing 316,000 people and destroying an already broken country.
Despite billions of dollars of international aid, most Haitians still live with unfathomable hardship and poverty. Over a million are still displaced, and living in ramshackle tent cities. Rebuilding has hardly begun. Cholera and political unrest threaten to unravel any progress being made.
But on a dusty road in Port au Prince, there is one bright spot: The Hopital Universitaire de la Paix, where a group of Canadians are trying to make a difference. Last February, I spent two weeks there, reporting on a medical aid mission run by the St. Joseph’s International Outreach Program, which included volunteers from St. Mary’s hospital in Kitchener.
On Sunday morning, I’ll be headed back. Over five days, I’ll update readers on a project we started telling them about last year, and about the group of doctors, nurses and other medical volunteers trying to modernize this 120-bed hospital.
I’ll be blogging, tweeting and writing newspaper stories about what I see, at La Paix and around Port au Prince. Stay tuned for more. Follow me on Twitter here.
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