Following the devastating January 2010 earthquake, an initial damage assessment process determined whether buildings were safe (green), sustained limited damage (yellow), or were unsafe (red). For the highest immediate impact, yellow tagged houses have been flagged for repair and are being repaired through various programs. (*taken from the miyamoto website)
Miyamoto, a seismic engineering company, has repaired over 9,500 homes in the last 3 years following the earthquake. A few stats that I gathered at the cocktail that Randy and I attended to celebrate this huge achievement by Miyamoto and their partner orgnaizations (of which Adoration is one of them)
- Total Houses repaired to date 9,902
- Total Households affected 14,952 (Average 7 people/household, 52% women)
- Total People affected 104,664
Adoration was able to partner with Miyamoto shortly after the earthquakce to do a yellow house project. Miyamoto worked in the community of Cite Aux Cayes and Cite Jeremie, where a number of families from Adoration's community live. And so Adoration partnered with Miyamoto for a 200 house project (total project cost was $300,000 USD) We were able to do this project with generous donations from supporters, individuals and companies from Canada who responded with financial donations after the earthquake. One of the things that we really appreciate about Miyamoto is their focus on educating the Haitians, that is our whole purpose at Adoration and so we felt that this project fit in well in helping in our community while meeting the goal of education.
It was exciting to attend the cocktail a couple of weeks ago, meet the people who are making a huge difference in how Haiti is being rebuilt and see how our small organization was able to contribute to the rebuilding and relocation of people back into their homes.
For some interesting videos and more information on the work Miyamoto is doing in Haiti check out this
link.
