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Lone Survivor: Separated & Unaccompanied Children Lost Within Haiti's Earthquake Aftermath For more information, contact: John Torres, Senior Public Relations Manager Donate to Haiti
Earthquake Response Fund
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti—“Oftentimes, I wonder if my mother has seen me but didn’t recognize me,” said 16-year-old Ginny. Born in the Haitian countryside, Ginny was given up at birth. Her father, like her mother, has never been a part of her life. Until age four, she was sent from one place to another to live with different people she doesn’t remember, and spent sometime living on the streets. At age four, a woman started talking to her on the street. Learning her story, she took her home and life turned around for Ginny for a while. “I got to go to school for the first time!” Ginny said. “But after grade 5, she stopped paying for my school and wouldn’t buy me any clothes,” Ginny recalled. About the same time, a man living in the home began abusing her. “He would beat me and come to me at night and try to rape me. I would scream but no one answered,” she recounted stoically. “I was so scared that I stopped sleeping at night.” At age 14, Ginny told her surrogate mom what was happening and asked her to kick him out. “She didn’t so I was the one who had to leave,” she explained. “I moved in with a neighbor.” Still unable to attend school, Ginny spent her days doing domestic service in this new home. Soon a relative of the family where she now lived started beating Ginny as well. Holding back many unjust details and painful memories, she simply summarized, “I’ve suffered a lot. No matter where, I was I wasn’t comfortable like I thought it would feel like if you were at home. Throughout it all,” Ginny said, “I just wanted to go home, to my mother.” “One day someone told me my mom had moved to Port-au-Prince and they gave me her phone number on a slip of paper. I immediately called her and asked if I could come home and she said ‘yes.’ She also told me I had five sisters!” Ginny was overjoyed that she could finally go home and meet the mother she’d never known. She quickly made plans to visit her mother. Tragically, the January 12 earthquake shattered all those plans. Despite barely surviving herself, as soon as she could, she went to the home address her mother had just given her. To her horror, the address was to a home that was now just a pile of rubble. “Day and night, I worry if my mother is still alive somewhere or if she died in her house. I came so close to meeting her and then this happened! Now, I really feel alone.” Not knowing how long her mother had been living in Port-au-Prince, she now wonders if their paths had ever crossed over the years. She had no way to recognize her mother and is pained to think her mother may have seen her, but hadn’t recognized her. Further frustrating her is the fact that she has once more lost all contact with her mother. “The piece of paper I had my mom’s phone number on was in my house and it’s collapsed,” said Ginny. “ There’s no way I can find the paper now.” Without any home at all after the earthquake, she made her way to ADRA’s camp for displaced persons that formed in the Carrefour neighborhood of Port-au-Prince following the earthquake. It was here that ADRA workers discovered her, and now she’s part of ADRA’s child protection and post-trauma program. “ADRA is providing food, shelter and psychosocial support to children who are alone, at-risk, and suffering from unimaginable loss,” said Patricia Müller, ADRA’s Post Trauma project coordinator in Haiti. For separated or unaccompanied children under age 18 like Ginny, ADRA is providing several services. Child-friendly spaces have been created and a temporary guardian is assigned to each child, with the assistance of community and church leaders, to ensure they have shelter and care in a safe and secure space. They also have access to psychosocial support. Additionally, ADRA is working with the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) and other partner agencies who work on family tracing to reunify unaccompanied children with their immediate or extended family members. Jennifer Morgan, who manages the inter-agency program for UNICEF, says the priority is identifying unaccompanied children and ensuring that they are safe and cared for where they are now, while efforts are made to trace their families. When people hear of separated or unaccompanied children, they often assume they’re orphans and want to quickly begin adoption proceedings. But Morgan warns otherwise. “Children have a right to be with their families. That is why it is so important to allow the reunification process to run its course,” said Morgan. “Plucking children out of their familiar surroundings and depositing them with strangers in strange places not only jeopardizes family reunification efforts, but also causes additional distress and instability,” says Morgan. “Even worse, without a structured process of protecting children, they risk falling into the hands of traffickers or other ill-intentioned individuals." The system works by fostering coordination between the humanitarian partners, in addition to government and community leaders. Since 2005, the jointly led system has been used in 15 countries, including Indonesia following the tsunami, and in Myanmar after Cyclone Nargis in 2008. As for Ginny’s future: “I just want to live good. I want to go to school and learn a profession because I want to survive.” she envisioned. Ginny has relatives nearly four hours away, but she doesn’t know their names. She remains hopeful that through the UNICEF network and the assistance of ADRA she will be soon united with family. Recently, Ginny met another girl who is in a similar situation. As they sat together they both agreed, “We stick together and look out for each other. We are each other’s family. And for the first time, in each other, we have found a sister. We are no longer alone.” If you would like to support ADRA’s relief efforts,
give to the Haiti
Earthquake Response Fund at www.adra.org/haiti,
or by phone at 1.800.424.ADRA (2372).
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