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Haiti: The Road to Recovery I n s i d e: • Stories of Survival • A Tale of Two Parishes • What You Help Make Possible
Leaving a Legacy of Hope
onefamily Onefamily is published twice yearly to keep leading supporters informed about the lifesaving work of Catholic Relief Services in more than 100 countries around the world. CRS is the international humanitarian agency of the Catholic community in the United States. Founded in 1943, we work to save lives, address poverty, promote the sacredness of life and dignity of the human person, and help build more peaceful societies. We work in partnership with other organizations that share our vision. CRS is efficient and effective. Ninety-five percent of the money we spend goes directly toward programs that benefit the poor overseas, without regard to race, belief or nationality. In 2009, CRS touched the lives of nearly 130 million people.
Features 2 Partners for Progress CRS relies on our vast network of partners to meet overwhelming needs. But our most important partners are the Haitian people themselves.
7 Stories of Survival Hope grows in the ruins of home. Sisters find the love they crave from a nun. A father begins to rebuild his life with the contents of a plastic bag. A teacher ensures that children are safe at the Dominican border.
13 A Tale of Two Parishes What do parishes from Baudin, Haiti, and West Lafayette, Indiana, have in common? A calling beyond their church walls.
16 Road to Recovery Throughout Port-au-Prince and the outside areas of Leogane and Jacmel, CRS is working side by side with the people of Haiti on a five-year recovery effort.
Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan Archbishop of New York Chair, Board of Directors Ken Hackett President Michael Wiest Executive Vice President, Charitable Giving Editor: Ellen Gortler Graphic Designer: Anny Djahova Photo Editor: Jim Stipe Associate Editor: Deborah Stein Contributors: Caroline Brennan, Lane Hartill, Sara A. Fajardo, Robyn Fieser, Michael Hill, Kim Pozniak, Tom Price, John Rivera, David Snyder
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Š2010 Catholic Relief Services. All rights reserved.
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Cover: A child at Port-au-Prince’s Petionville camp, where about 50,000 Haitians took refuge after the earthquake. I Photo by David Snyder for CRS
18 Our Five-Year Plan 12 Giving Back: A Family Tradition Touches Haiti A visit by the Wolohan Family brings them to the front lines of change.
Back cover E mergency Update: Promoting Peace in Sudan
Our Commitment to Haiti K en H ackett P resident
Dear Friend, The plight of our brothers and sisters in Haiti has moved us to tears, drawn us to prayer and motivated us to reach out. I’d like to share with you some of what your help has made possible. In the first weeks after the January 12 earthquake, Catholic Relief Services concentrated on providing the most basic of needs: food, water and shelter. Because of our long presence in the country and strong staff capacity, we were asked by the U.S. Army to help respond to the largest spontaneous camp, which formed at a golf course in the Port-au-Prince community of Petionville. We provided food and handed out versatile shelter kits that would help the residents reinforce the temporary homes they had already fashioned. We also set up large-scale water systems, lavatories and stations for hand-washing, addressing basic needs and preventing disease. And because of our involvement in Haiti’s medical system through our existing HIV and AIDS programs, we were able to quickly transition to emergency trauma care. CRS helped to reopen one of Haiti’s oldest and largest hospitals, St. Francois de Sales, and brought in trauma surgeons through our partners in Baltimore to provide the highest-quality care for the injured. In the months that followed, we transitioned from large-scale food distributions to opportunities for Haitians to earn money for work on essential projects, like improving drainage systems. This approach injected much-needed cash into the local economy and enabled people to support their families. We are also helping families to transition from the temporary shelters fashioned from timbers and tarps to more stable housing that will last long enough for them to find more permanent solutions. This disaster has been one of the most complex and arduous that we have faced. Even before the earthquake, Haiti grappled with crippling poverty. In the capital city of Port-au-Prince, there was a lack of the most basic infrastructure. Throughout the country, the system of landownership is murky. And the country has been beset by a history of political instability. The future will be challenging. But Catholic Relief Services has been working in Haiti for more than half a century. We know the people, and we have strong partnerships with the Catholic Church, as well as with local and international agencies and the Haitian government. Over the next five years, and many more, we are committed to ensuring that the Haitian people can build a better future for themselves and their children. On behalf of those we serve, we thank you for your support and prayers.
Ken Hackett
President
CRS found an ambulance, paid for fuel and recruited volunteers. A refrigerator was pulled out of the rubble to store blood.
of a longstanding HIV and AIDS program, run by CRS and the University of Maryland School of Medicine’s Institute of Human Virology, which has provided care to more than 9,000 Haitians. The familiarity of both agencies with the hospital and its staff allowed us to respond quickly after the earthquake struck. Within days, firefighters, doctors and CRS staff were digging through the rubble of the mostly collapsed hospital to find medical supplies. Volunteer nurses and doctors tended the injured in the courtyard as others worked to resurrect the hospital’s one surviving building, which Catholic Health East had originally helped build. CRS found an ambulance, paid for fuel and recruited volunteers. A refrigerator was pulled out of the rubble to store blood. In the first week, three makeshift operating rooms were functioning. At the very beginning, doctors amputated limbs and cut out infected tissue of the severely injured.
Partners for Progress
Long-Term Commitment
After 70 percent of St. Francois de Sales Hospital collapsed in the aftermath of the 7.0-magnitude earthquake, medical personnel shifted to treating people under tents outdoors. Photo by Sara A. Fajardo/CRS
By Sara A. Fajardo, Robyn Fieser, Kim Pozniak, Tom Price
CRS relies on our vast network of partners to meet overwhelming needs. But our most important partners are the Haitian people themselves.
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A volunteer medical translator plays with a patient at St. Francois de Sales, one of Portau-Prince’s oldest hospitals. Photo by Sara A. Fajardo/CRS
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In the days and months that followed the January earthquake in Haiti, Catholic Relief Services relied on our partnerships to meet the overwhelming needs of a devastated population. Working with partners, we dug through rubble, set up a hospital, and distributed food and water. Outside of Portau-Prince, we worked through our longstanding partners to help communities grow more food and take care of vulnerable children.
The first medical team from the medical system’s Shock Trauma Center arrived just two weeks after the quake, bringing with them 8,000 pounds of donated and purchased medical supplies and equipment. Until the end of June, teams of between 15 and 25 doctors and
nurses rotated in and out of Haiti for one to two weeks at a time, working in what remained of the hospital, performing hundreds of critical surgeries alongside Haitian doctors and nurses who survived the quake. On a typical day, the teams evaluated an average of 250 patients, with 20 of these patients undergoing surgery. Many medical teams rushed to Haiti immediately after the disaster to provide emergency care. And many of them left again soon after. The goal of the CRS-University of Maryland partnership was to establish a more sustained, longer-term mission to meet the medical needs of survivors. “Almost all of the other teams that were coming to help were doing good work, but then they left,” says Thomas Scalea, MD, physician-inchief of the Shock Trauma Center and professor of surgery at the School of Medicine. “We made a commitment to stay for several months, to see this group of patients from start to finish.” “We plan to continue this partnership with CRS for many months to come,” adds Jeffrey A. Rivest, president and chief executive officer of the university’s Medical Center. As the immediate emergency has settled into a long-term recovery effort, the medical response has also evolved. Haitian doctors are back at work at St. Francois de Sales, and staff members from the University of Maryland Medical System are visiting less frequently but providing more targeted assistance. They are treating specialized cases and training Haitian doctors to diagnose and treat challenging cases, building long-term capacity. In addition, CRS is working with St. Francois de Sales administrators to relocate the facility to a temporary location in September 2010, so that the destroyed hospital buildings can be rebuilt.
The St. Francois de Sales Hospital quickly became ground zero for a lifesaving partnership between CRS and the University of Maryland Medical System. This Catholic hospital, which was 70 percent destroyed in the earthquake, is one of Port-au-Prince’s oldest. It is also one of the sites
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Strengthening Haiti’s Health Care Sector CRS was already working with the University of Maryland School of Medicine and Catholic health care institutions in Haiti before the earthquake to strengthen the country’s health care sector. St. Francois de Sales had a long history of providing care and support to the community, serving more than 1 million people in Port-au-Prince and 2.5 million in the surrounding communities. The hospital served as a reference hospital for all the regions in the country, as well as the university hospital for students of the medical, nursing and laboratory schools of the University of Notre Dame, Haiti. Urgent needs since the earthquake have accelerated plans for a joint postgraduate degree offered by the University of Notre Dame in Haiti in partnership with CRS and University of Maryland. Haitian physicians and nurses will be eligible for postgraduate diplomas in HIV treatment and care, orthopedic trauma care, and nursing. 4
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Haiti had a large gap in health care services and a lack of medical professionals even before the quake. This partnership aims to improve Haiti’s health care sector by strengthening local institutions and training local health professionals.
Juanista Sister Nidia at her home in Ouanaminthe. Photo by Sara A. Fajardo/CRS
Food was scarce, and as thousands of displaced Haitians from Portau-Prince made their way back to the provinces, many families already struggling suddenly had more mouths to feed.
A resident of the Solino camp in Portau-Prince clears canals surrounding the camp of debris and trash as part of a CRS cash-for-work project, above. Below, CRS hired local workers to build water tanks and distribute sanitation kits. Photos by David Snyder for CRS
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Working With the People In the camps of displaced people that sprouted up around the city, CRS found that our most important partners in Haiti are the people themselves. Since the earthquake hit, we have worked hand in hand with Haitians to get clean drinking water and sanitation systems into the densely populated camps, some as large as 50,000 people. Volunteers work to chlorinate water, build water systems, construct latrines, and spread the message of the importance of good hygiene practices in order to help stave off the outbreak of disease. To reinforce their important work, CRS teamed up with a well-known street artist. At strategic spots throughout the city, he created colorful reminders
for people to wash their hands. Our comprehensive approach to water and sanitation in Haiti has adapted to weather patterns and the changing needs of the people themselves. In anticipation of the rainy season, with the support of the U.S. Agency for International Development, CRS hired hundreds of cash-for-work crews to clear canals in the Solino neighborhood that were clogged with debris and human waste. CRS hired and worked with another crew of displaced Haitians to dig drainage ditches in the sloping hillside that was once Haiti’s only golf course.
and other vulnerable people in the bustling Haitian border town of Ouanaminthe, found that the needs of the newly displaced went far beyond a meal. As the sisters combed the streets of their communities, they encountered children with no parents. They talked to teenagers who had been sexually assaulted. And they heard of women who were rescued by the police after smugglers, preying on their desperation, tried to coerce them into migrating to neighboring Dominican Republic. “They have huge hearts, the sisters,”
With the help of the St. Marie Canope Vert community, CRS tested a pilot eco-sanitation program that turns human waste into fertilizer. The participation of this community has been instrumental and CRS now plans to implement this project on a larger scale in makeshift camps in Port-au-Prince. The fertilizer sales will help supplement the income of some 5,000 individuals.
Looking Beyond Port-au-Prince Outside of Port-au-Prince and the surrounding area, the earthquake did not cause the same physical damage, but it did leave rural communities cut off from the commercial center of the country. Food was scarce, and as thousands of displaced Haitians from Port-au-Prince made their way back to the provinces, many families already struggling suddenly had more mouths to feed.
says Francisca Vigaud-Walsh, CRS’ global sexual and gender-based violence program manager, who arrived in the region from Baltimore one month after the earthquake. “They took them all in.” Following emergencies, women and children become more vulnerable, says Vigaud-Walsh.
In communities along the border with the Dominican Republic, households were swelling to as many as 20 people. So CRS, with the help of longstanding partners Caritas Haiti and the Juanista Sisters, established a voucher program that allowed thousands of families to buy food locally to feed their growing households.
“Children lose their caretakers. There is no privacy. Some people are living 20 to a room and the risk for exploitation is much higher.”
The Juanista Sisters, an order that has long operated a center for outreach to women, children
The project has established a safe house where the sisters will care for survivors of sexual and other forms
Vigaud-Walsh spent months in Haiti after the earthquake helping to design a program with the Juanista Sisters that will help keep women and children safe.
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of gender-based violence, as well as children who are rescued from trafficking. The house is hosting children who were separated from their parents during the earthquake as CRS and our partners help them reunite with their families. The Juanista Sisters will also coordinate a referral network, which CRS helped establish, made up of other partners and local government to make sure that survivors have access to medical, legal and psychological services. Finally, a large-scale prevention campaign on local radio stations and in newspapers is teaching people about the effects of violence against women and children.
microfinance. The program reaches 250,000 beneficiaries annually. Today, the school feeding component has been expanded to reach some 135,000 children this school year because of the increased number of children registered for school. The agriculture program held extra seed fairs for the farmers who now have more mouths to feed. All of this is implemented through many smaller Haitian community organizations: a partnership at the grass-roots level. “We are teaching them about watershed management. The community then understands, protects and manages,” explains Dr. Jude Marie Banatte, who coordinates Kole Zepol for CRS. “And with watershed management we are addressing the causes of food insecurity and protecting the environment.” The agricultural partnerships work with small-scale farmers’ associations, as does the microfinance component of Kole Zepol. The community groups have names like Men nan Men, or Hand in Hand. Partnership is one crucial element of Kole Zepol. The other is that Kole Zepol takes a holistic approach to improving the lives and livelihoods of villagers in impoverished rural Haiti, hence the many program areas.
Desir Jeanne Ornelie raises eggplants as part of a CRS-supported agricultural and reforestation program in Haiti. Photo by Tom Price/CRS
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The Spirit of Partnership On the other side of the island— in the provinces of Sud, Grand Anse and Nippes, where CRS has traditionally worked—the number of displaced people from Port-au-Prince was also putting pressure on already struggling communities. There, one of CRS’ largest projects expanded to meet the growing need. Known locally as Kole Zepol, or Side by Side, the joint Caritas Haiti, CRS and USAID program covers mother and child health, agriculture, watershed management, education, and
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Stories of Survival Hope grows in the ruins of home. Sisters find the love they crave from a nun. A father begins to rebuild his life with the contents of a plastic bag. A teacher ensures that children are safe at the Dominican border.
“We try to be integrated. We try to address all of the problems facing the community,” says Kossi Kpogo, CRS head of office for Les Cayes. Started in 2008, Kole Zepol will continue at least through 2012. You can see the fruits of its labor in the produce that farmers are now harvesting. “CRS is working for us, CRS is working with the poor people,” says Meprilant Desir, a farmer who is caring for extra family members. Sara A. Fajardo, Robyn Fieser, Kim Pozniak and Tom Price work for CRS’ Communications department.
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Constant Bebe in front of his former home, which was destroyed by the January 12 earthquake. Photo by Sara A. Fajardo/CRS
Hope Among the Ruins: Constant Bebe By Sara A. Fajardo
The bougainvillea continues to grow through the rubble of university professor Constant Bebe’s home. Its cheery fuchsia flowers push past broken concrete and the mangled wrought iron that once lined the porch of his Port-au-Prince residence. The savage 7.0-magnitude earthquake that took more than 230,000 lives shredded Constant’s threeunit building. The bottom floor buckled under the seismic waves. The top two tiers toppled like a poorly structured cake. Constant’s elderly neighbors were crushed under the weight of the shattered roof. Constant was about to step into the shower when the earthquake struck. He grabbed the door frame and felt the house sway, then suddenly lurch like an elevator
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in descent. “I thought I was going to die,” he calmly states whenever he tells the story. But fortunately Constant was standing in the only room the earthquake spared. His wife and young son were thankfully not at home. Constant says to me, “Our houses need to be more like the trees. They all fell, but the trees are still standing. The Haitian people need deep roots that can bend but not break.” And while the earthquake broke many, both physically and emotionally, Constant has taken to his new life with a joyful commitment to help those around him.
Above: Close to 50,000 Haitians now call the golf course at the Petionville Club home. Photo by Lane Hartill/CRS
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Below: Constant and his wife have been living at Petionville on a small plot with several other families. Photo by Sara A. Fajardo/CRS
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He and his wife settled in the makeshift camp that crowds the onceverdant grounds of the Petionville Club golf course. They share a small square of parched land with several other families. Their preteen son, too young for camp living, stays with family in a house on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince. Each day Constant roams the camp finding ways to use his English, perfected from years of study in New York. When we are introduced, Constant takes my hands into his large ones and greets me with the warmth of a dear friend. He’s been working as a translator. I’m there photographing CRS’ response. Constant quickly offers to show me around. Constant smoothes my way through Petionville in exuberant Creole as I photograph. In a camp of around 50,000, women poke their heads out of tents to offer him a plate of warm food and little kids run to clasp his hand as he walks. After a few hours Constant offers to show me his house. We stare at the remains. A motorcycle roars in the distance, birds sing overhead. Someone has
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come and pulled the furniture from the top-floor apartment onto the cement courtyard below. An old photograph is tucked into the beveled mirror of a honey-colored dresser. Constant slips it out and stares at it. “This was my neighbor,” he tells me.
By Their Side: Nashan and Nashana
As I look at the house, and at the photograph against the deep grooves of his palm, I finally understand the full impact of what was lost in Haiti. To me, the number 230,000 dead takes on new meaning. That cold statistic becomes 230,000 mothers, daughters, sons and fathers; 230,000 professors, nurses, students and cooks; 230,000 truncated futures; 230,000 untold stories.
By Caroline Brennan
I first met Nashan and Nashana back in January, just after the earthquake, when they were sitting under a tree surrounded by their best friends— other girls who, like them, are orphans. They live together, and attend school, at the Foye Ti Zanmi Jezi (Little Friends of Jesus Orphanage) on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince.
On this day, in a broken courtyard with a panoramic view, the loss in Haiti takes on the sunny face of my dear friend Constant. The future here is paved in what ifs and what could have beens, but men like Constant are living symbols of hope. He is like the bougainvillea that grows around his former home—still thriving, reaching and growing despite a blow that crippled a nation.
CRS has been providing monthly food and educational support to this center for many years; it has a special place in the hearts of our staff. When the earthquake crashed the phone lines, it was impossible to get immediate news about the orphanage and all of the girls there. The only way to find out was to show up, and I happened to be on the truck that day. When we arrived, Foye Ti Zanmi was unrecognizable. The school, which served up to 350 children in the community, looked like it had simply knelt down, then toppled over.
Soon after this visit, Constant Bebe was hired by CRS as a community liaison at the Petionville camp. Sara A. Fajardo is a CRS communications officer covering Latin America and the Caribbean. She is based in Baltimore, Maryland.
Piles of cement blocks were at our feet, the roof of the second story
now waist high. All of the children survived the earthquake. But their dormitory had crashed behind them as they fled into the grass. The children were now sleeping outside, crammed into about four large tents. It’s close quarters: Their numbers had swelled from 52 to 90. Concerned neighbors and parents with no homes or prospects of work had left an additional 38 children for safekeeping. That was in January, just after the quake. When I pulled into the driveway this summer, I was stunned to find it again unrecognizable, but this time in a good way: The rubble had been cleared, and in the place of the dormitory were large temporary classrooms under spacious, sturdy tents. They were clearly moving forward. “It’s getting a little better,” says Sister Elizabeth, who has worked at the orphanage since 1998. “Before, we were in a very critical situation. But with so much support, we are doing better. We have had the help of tents for sleeping and transitional classrooms.”
Nashan, left, and Nashana have been living at the CRS-supported Little Friends of Jesus Orphanage since 2008. Photo by Caroline Brennan/CRS
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“Our houses need to be more like the trees. They all fell, but the trees are still standing. The Haitian people need deep roots that can bend but not break.” —Constant Bebe
CRS is providing educational materials as well as continued monthly food rations and boxes of toys. But the recovery is more than physical. Three www.crs.org
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psychologists come every week to talk with the children and help them cope with their emotional struggles.
Shelter in a Bag: Constant Pierre Dephane
Nashana and Nashan looked happy to sit with me in their new classroom: chairs and a blackboard covered with a tarp. It was the afternoon and school was out, so we had the space to ourselves. It was scorching hot.
By David Snyder
I realized how little I knew about their family. Sister Elizabeth told me that their father was a police officer murdered in a rough part of town. The girls remain in close touch with their mother, who is struggling. She had brought the girls here with the hope that the center could provide better care for them, good food and an education—things that she wasn’t able to. That was December 22, 2008, a date the girls know by heart, and state with sadness. Sister Elizabeth had informed me that their mother’s pelvis and leg were crushed in the earthquake. But the girls were upbeat. They talk to me about their life at Foye Ti Zanmi. “We pray the same prayer every night. We say, ‘Please protect us during the night while we are sleeping,’ ” says Nashana. Nashana wants to be a nurse or a drugstore owner. Nashan wants to be a nurse or an engineer. Top and above: CRS driver Rubens Dervilus helps Sister Elizabeth Eloi pass out food and a young girl plays with toys, both supplied by CRS, at the Little Friends of Jesus Orphanage. Photos by Sara A. Fajardo/CRS
But what they really want is something out of reach, someone who was also a nurse in her better days.
Right: Constant Pierre Dephane nails through a bit of inner tube to attach a plastic tarp to a plank. The rubber inner tube pieces help prevent the nails from ripping the plastic. Photo by David Snyder for CRS
“It’s true that nothing is better than being with your mother. Until that time, we will do our best to provide love, and support these girls. It’s the best we can do,” Sister Elizabeth says.
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his former home, he led his family to a clear patch of earth on what used to be the Petionville golf course, today the largest camp for displaced people in the city. Erecting a shelter of bedsheets and a piece of corrugated metal, Constant, his wife, his sister and his niece crowded into a tiny 6-by-8-foot space. The shelter was far from adequate.
Reaching into a wrinkled plastic bag, Constant Pierre Dephane gathers what tools he has and gets to work quickly, animated by today’s addition to his few possessions. One of more than 50,000 residents in the Petionville camp, Constant plans to make good use of the materials he received today from Catholic Relief Services. As he works, he explains how he came to be at Petionville.
“During the rain, the whole family stays up to catch water in buckets,” Constant says. “We just try to keep the rain out.” Having arrived late to the camp, Constant and his family missed CRS’ large-scale shelter distributions. In the weeks after the quake, CRS reached more than 6,500 families with shelter kits, each containing two plastic tarps, a length of rope, 80 nails and a tire inner tube, which is cut up and used to keep the nails from tearing the precious tarps.
“I came back here 16 days ago,” Constant says. “This was the only place I knew because I have relatives here.” When the earthquake struck Portau-Prince, Constant and his family rushed out into the streets and watched their house collapse, leaving them with nothing. With his own family safe, his thoughts turned to his elderly parents, who live about five hours by public transport from Port-au-Prince. The next day, he and his family went there. They stayed for over a month to care for his parents.
But Constant was one of the first on the list when CRS distributed a second round of shelter kits. Like many crowding Haiti’s temporary camps, Constant is industrious and creative. Over the next two hours, with the help of a friend, he carefully measures out the largest space he can cover with his two new tarps, using scrap wood
But with no chance for work in the small town, Constant says he was drawn back to Port-au-Prince, even knowing he had nothing to return to. Salvaging what scraps he could from
“What would make me feel good is to have my mother by my side,” says Nashan.
as support posts. Disassembling his former shelter to make maximum use of the materials at hand, he covers the new space with the two tarps, and uses the bedsheets and scrap metal as walls, where rain is less likely to leak in. When he is finished, he has doubled the size of his now waterproof shelter, and created two rooms within the structure—one small comfort to make life just a bit easier in the camp.
That’s why Sonyne is here. She’s a member of Heartland Alliance, a CRS partner that has five Haitian staff stationed on the border, watching for child smugglers. The former teacher now spends her days watching for adults trailed by kids who aren’t their own.
Constant spends little time worrying about the future. At least he has a shelter now to keep the rain off. Tomorrow, he says, he will see what comes. “I will just try to work as I can to rebuild,” Constant says. David Snyder is a freelance photojournalist who has traveled to more than 30 countries for CRS.
A Watchful Eye: Sonyne By Lane Hartill
This is the place where Haitians came to leave. After the earthquake, Haitians thronged to Ouanaminthe, ready to escape to the relative prosperity of neighboring Dominican Republic. But along with them came traffickers, who have always lurked on the border.
CRS is setting up a safe house for children rescued from trafficking and women who are survivors of sexual and other gender-based violence. The agency will also find host families for children until they can be reunited with their own families, which CRS and our partners will help locate. Sonyne spots two small children trailing a woman. “Excuse me, ma’am,” she asks her gently. “Can I talk to you for a minute?” She has no documentation for the children; many Haitians don’t. But she does have a vaccination card. Since the earthquake, the Dominican Republic has allowed Haitians to cross into the country for free medical care. Sonyne squats down eye level with the children, and, in a kindergarten teacher’s voice, asks the kids questions about the woman they’re with. They pass the test, and walk off with their mom. Lane Hartill is CRS’ western and central Africa regional information officer, based in Dakar, Senegal. Lane traveled to Haiti for CRS following the earthquake.
A senior communications officer for CRS, Caroline Brennan traveled to Haiti to report on the progress of earthquake recovery efforts.
Above: Sonyne Ducoste checks on children at the border between Ouanaminthe, Haiti, and Dajabon, Dominican Republic. Photo by Lane Hartill/CRS
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Giving Back:
A Family Tradition Touches Haiti In 2009, when Christine Wolohan of Wayzata, Minnesota, traveled to Haiti with her brother, Dr. Michael Wolohan, and nephew Sean, it was their family’s first visit to the country. They’d been considering a visit to see Catholic Relief Services’ work for some time. It was part of their family fabric to reach out to people in need—a tradition learned early in life. “When we visited Haiti, our purpose was to have a boots-on-the-ground perspective—a firsthand look at people’s lives, the challenges they face, and how things work with CRS operations, infrastructure and results. It is one thing to be here at home and see Haiti in the news; it’s quite another to be there,” says Christine.
By Caroline Brennan
A visit by the Wolohan family brings them to the front lines of change.
“I was moved by the level of connection with the people. The local communities and family connections are very strong. These are not programs that ‘do to’ people, but rather ‘work with’ people. Because communities ‘own’ the effort, it’s empowering and more easily sustained.”
A Tale of Two
Parishes By Caroline Brennan, Tom Price
What do parishes from Baudin, Haiti, and West Lafayette, Indiana, have in common? A calling beyond their church walls.
When the earthquake hit five months after her visit, many of the CRS staff Christine met in Les Cayes rushed to Port-au-Prince to help their colleagues provide vital relief in the collapsed capital city. “We were so concerned about the people we had met. I just thought, Are they okay? Are their families okay?” Christine stays in close touch with the relief efforts on the ground, as well as in places around the world where the Wolohan family is helping people build better lives. It is the continuation of family tradition: Christine’s parents, and their parents, instilled in their children the expectation that they contribute, that part of their job on earth was to help make it a better place when they leave it.
Christine and her family members, traveling on behalf of the Wolohan Family Foundation, visited CRS programs predominantly in the southern region of Les Cayes. Throughout their visit, health issues stood out for Christine—who is a nurse and quality director at a veteran’s hospital—as well as for Christine Wolohan, right, traveled to Haiti with her Michael, an orthopedic brother Dr. Michael Wolohan, left, and nephew Sean. surgeon. They saw Photo by Richard Russell/CRS hospitals, clinics and “It’s everybody’s job to social service centers, help the world be a little bit better. That is part and met with doctors, nurses, volunteers and of our values, our commitment to our faith, our community members. family and the people we share the world with. “What is most remarkable is how basic the needs “My dad and mom taught us to always think are: getting people immunized, kids screened for about the future. Right up until my father’s dying malnutrition, access to prenatal care for moms, day, he was thinking about what the world would clean water systems, and visits with health care professionals. This isn’t about multimillion-dollar be like 10 to 15 years from now…even though he knew he wouldn’t be here to see it.” equipment. This is basic public health.
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Four and a half hours from Haiti’s capital city, you feel like you’re in another world. That’s why it’s so surprising that some of those who are able to describe Baudin with such intimacy and familiarity come from a place you might not expect: West Lafayette, Indiana. The parishioners of St. Thomas Aquinas in West Lafayette (the Catholic Center at Purdue University) will tell you theirs is a special relationship with Baudin’s St. Francis Xavier parish. It’s a sister relationship that has spanned geography and nearly a generation, and enriched perspectives on both sides of the Western Hemisphere. It happened somewhat by chance. In the early 1990s, Jim Altepeter of St. Thomas Aquinas was interested in forming a parish group that would support Haiti and, in particular, a parish in need. Fellow parishioner Rob Pahl remembers this time well.
Caroline Brennan is a CRS senior communications officer.
Genie Denis is president of her class at St. Francis Xavier parish’s secondary school in Baudin, Haiti. Photo by Caroline Brennan/CRS
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The Haitian village of Baudin couldn’t feel farther from the heaving city of Port-au-Prince. Sitting atop a foggy mountain, Baudin is as picturesque as it is remote, requiring a four-wheel drive and clear skies to traverse the steep gravel road that could so easily be washed away in a heavy rain.
“We wanted a spiritual and helpful relationship with a parish in an underserved part of the world. We wanted to touch a parish in a developing country and for them to touch us,” says Rob. www.crs.org
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Jim traveled to Haiti to find a needy parish that could benefit from the solidarity and generosity amassed at St. Thomas Aquinas. Upon landing in Port-au-Prince, Jim made his way to the Hospice St. Joseph where, down the hall, Father Theo Domond of Baudin had recently set down his bags after the long trek from his village. When they met in passing and Jim told his story, Father Domond immediately invited him back out on the open, rugged road to Baudin.
ATLANTIC OCEAN
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DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
Baudin
Port-au-Prince
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After St. Francis Xavier’s secondary school buildings collapsed in the earthquake, CRS provided three school tents so classes could continue. Photo by Caroline Brennan/CRS
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To say that Baudin is a village in need is an understatement. The town is so remote that very little sign of the Haitian government exists: no police station, no health clinic, no primary school. Sitting in his temporary dining hall post-earthquake, Father Delma Camy, the current pastor at St. Francis Xavier, painted a picture of his reality. “Here, it’s not like in the U.S. where the believers support the parish. In Haiti, the parish supports the believers—their water, their health, their education. The parents can’t pay for school fees, so the Church helps them. The Church even provides the schooling when it’s not there. The priest goes to people’s homes to offer support. If we don’t, they have no one else. This is why our relationship with West Lafayette is so meaningful. They help us help the people,” says Father Camy.
For years, Father Camy and other pastors saw families suffering from malaria, illiteracy, and lack of any dental or health care—people’s potential for long, prosperous lives abbreviated. During his visit, Jim saw these adversities up close, and the potential for the people of St. Thomas Aquinas to make a transformative impact.
certain length of time. Many of them are teachers at St. Francis Xavier’s secondary school.
Today, the footprint of West Lafayette in Baudin is impossible to miss. A dental clinic built by Dr. Dave Schubert from Chicago sits just behind the parish rectory, and a medical clinic is nearby. Five times a year, St. Thomas Aquinas sends teams of doctors, and Dr. Schubert organizes dentists, to provide highquality care, treating 1,200 patients during each visit.
“After a trip you really understand what the ministry is all about, to be with the people,” says Rob. “Spiritually, it has challenged us to look at what we are called to do beyond our Church walls. We have really bonded in a spiritual way with the parish in Baudin. We’ve grown. It has created a whole new passion and awareness to walk the walk.”
Rob Pahl, a retired materials engineer, has seen much of this firsthand. He has visited Haiti six times over the past 11 years, most recently in March just two months after the earthquake.
The sharing and exposure go both ways. Over the years, St. Thomas Aquinas has brought more than a dozen Haitian pastors and students to West Lafayette. Father Camy was among them.
To raise funds for projects in Baudin, St. Thomas Aquinas helps organize an annual Hunger Hike—a 2-mile hike or 4.5-mile run that benefits several areas of need. Also, St. Thomas Aquinas as a parish tithes 5 percent of their Sunday collections for Haiti.
“When I visited West Lafayette, I tried to compare it to Baudin, but there is such a great difference. Life, the church, the town and the people— everything is different. And, I realize now, how different it is for them when they come here. When they come here they live another experience. Here, life is simple. People here are poor, but they are rich in love. In West Lafayette people are rich, but they love God,” says Father Camy.
St. Thomas Aquinas also reached out to CRS for the first time in 2009 to seek support for expanding the use of water filters that were in great need in Baudin. That communication made for the beginning of what is likely to be a lasting partnership. Clean water is now available to more than 12,000 people in Baudin, with water filter systems in people’s homes. The water filter program is trackable on a GPS map and checked monthly by local water technicians. Families have experienced a dramatic decrease in waterborne diseases.
When the earthquake struck in January of this year, St. Thomas Aquinas had a direct line to Baudin. The news was worrisome: Four of the eight churches in the community had collapsed, and the rectory at Father Camy’s church was destroyed along with the secondary school and other buildings vital to the community.
St. Thomas Aquinas has covered teacher salaries at St. Francis Xavier’s secondary school, and student tuition at its primary school. For some of the graduates, St. Thomas Aquinas sponsors university scholarships to study in Port-au-Prince with the agreement that, after graduation, the students will return to Baudin to serve their community for a
The people of St. Thomas Aquinas lost some of their Baudin friends, and responded immediately with support. Together, the two parishes continue to assess priorities for recovery and capacity to help. In partnership, CRS has provided three large educational tents and support so that education can resume at the secondary school. Nearly 200 students are back at school, their collapsed building just beyond the tents.
“In Haiti, the parish supports the believers— their water, their health, their education. If we don’t, they have no one else.” — Father Delma Camy
“These people have such strong faith,” says Rob. The recovery in Baudin, as for Haitians across the country, will take years. Father Camy knows this. But he also knows that the people of Baudin are blessed to have such a rich, meaningful relationship with their sister parish in West Lafayette. At this point, it is like family. “Since we have had the relationship with St. Tom’s parish, we have health for the people. We have good water for the people. We have education for the people. We have a better life,” he says. CRS offers resources, models and structures that help dioceses and parishes like St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Francis Xavier establish strong foundations for lasting partnerships— relationships that foster mutual solidarity and the spirit of one human family. For more information, please visit http://parishtwinning.crs.org. Caroline Brennan is a CRS senior communications officer. Tom Price is a CRS senior communications manager.
“ People here are poor, but they are rich in love. In West Lafayette people are rich, but they love God,” says Father Camy. Photo by Caroline Brennan/CRS
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A St. Thomas Aquinas parishioner, Sue Alexander, was visiting Port-auPrince at the time and was pulled from a destroyed home by a longtime friend and translator, Martin Glesil. (Sue has vowed to help him restore his house and has personally raised more than $10,000.)
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emotional. CRS is collaborating with our Caritas partners, the local Catholic Church, the Haitian government and fellow humanitarian aid agencies to overcome obstacles while upholding the quality and pace of recovery, and ensuring the inf luential voice and participation of Haitians throughout the process.
Above: Haitians at the Petionville camp line up for food bags filled with lentils, soy-fortified bulgur and vegetable oil. Below: A worker prepares containers of nails for 7,000 shelter kits to be distributed at the Petionville camp. Photos by Sara A. Fajardo/CRS
Road to Recovery
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At times, it can be challenging to see recovery amid the debris. But we know from experience the possibilities ahead, especially when we look to areas that are now on the other side of catastrophe—like Banda Aceh, Indonesia, which was near the epicenter of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Five years on, we are seeing Banda Aceh thriving with beautiful safe homes; rebuilt roads, hospitals and schools; a skilled local workforce and a dynamic economy no longer dependent on outside aid. In Haiti, CRS colleagues from tsunami-affected areas have come to work alongside the relief teams as an extension of solidarity and support, and in a partnership that comes full circle.
Our presence in Haiti of more than 50 years keeps us grounded with contextual understanding, sensitivity and trusted partners. We are humbled by our talented team, which includes Haitians who suffered profound personal loss, as well as colleagues from around the world. To date in Haiti, we have provided food, emergency shelter, water, health care, education and livelihood support to nearly 900,000 people—a population larger than the city of Detroit. Still, this is just the beginning. Our emphasis is not on statistics but on the scope, scale and quality of this response, and its relevance to the reality facing some of the most vulnerable people on our planet. We take as much care in responding quickly as we do thoughtfully. With the perspective of these first months, CRS has mapped out a strategy for a long-term recovery program that will span five years and commit approximately $200 million to help people heal in various aspects of their lives.
By Caroline Brennan
Throughout Port-au-Prince and the outside areas of Leogane and Jacmel, CRS is working side by side with the people of Haiti on a five-year recovery effort.
A young girl with a broken pelvis recovers from surgery at the CRSsupported St. Francois de Sales Hospital in Port-au-Prince. Photo by David Snyder for CRS
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Nearly nine months after the worst earthquake in recent memory hit the Latin American region, Haiti is a country healing. Plastic tarp roofs span sprawling city camps like a patchwork quilt; children attend schools and activities under large dome tents; water infrastructure, latrines and f lood dams are part of the city’s developing framework; and the streets and canals are being steadily cleared of their debris. Throughout Port-au-Prince and the departments of Leogane and Jacmel, Catholic Relief Services and our partners are working with Haitians to respond to their immediate needs on the ground while laying a foundation for their full, lasting recovery. Our goal is to help people not only overcome the disaster’s aftermath, but build a foundation for a greater quality of life than they had before it. While significant strides have been made, the challenges people face are immense, and
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Our Five-Year Plan Haiti Program Snapshot Partners:
Reach:
Program areas:
An estimated 900,000 displaced people living in Port-au-Prince, the southern departments, and the northern border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
Shelter and community infrastructure, health, water and sanitation, food and livelihood security, and protection of women and children.
Timeline: 2010 to 2015
Caritas Haiti and Caritas Internationalis members, the local Catholic Church, the U.S. and Haitian governments, private and Catholic health institutions, private aid organizations, and United Nations agencies.
On average, every month in Haiti, CRS provides 375,000 gallons of water. Currently, we are helping prepare means for water infrastructure and sanitation at the relocation sites.
Postoperative patients are referred to CRS-supported rehabilitation centers at St. Charles Seminary and at the temporary St. Francois de Sales Hospital site. In the camps, we recruited workers to carry out public health campaigns. We are supporting hospitals with administrative and management costs, medical training, equipment, supplies, and pharmaceuticals.
People in good health are most likely to be productive and able to take care of themselves. CRS is working to ensure the health and well-being of the Haitian people through health care and protection of women and children. Quality Health Care CRS has provided medical care to more than 60,000 people through camp-based clinics and the remains of the Notre Dame de Lourdes and St. Francois de Sales hospitals.
ong-Term Rebuilding (between two L and five years): Reconstruction and restoration of major infrastructure, as well as strengthening people’s options for leading self-sufficient, prosperous lives.
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teams worked around the clock to provide the best possible care in the traumatic conditions.
Health and Safety
Overlapping Phases:
Emergency Response (first six months): Immediate response for lifesaving, critical needs.
gender-separated latrines with locks, and 24-hour community protection groups help to keep people safe.
Our partner, the University of Maryland Medical System, sent in rotations of doctors, nurses, anesthesiologists and technicians, and Haitian Ministry of Health
2015
Transition (up to two years): Intermediate programming for people to regain stability and have temporary means for shelter, education, work and health care.
The earthquake destroyed 70 percent of Haiti’s hospital buildings, including at least 50 health care facilities and two of the country’s three nursing schools. CRS will work with Haiti’s Ministry of Health and Catholic health partners to rebuild Haiti’s health care system.
And we continue to provide services to people with HIV, previously our largest program in Haiti. Protecting Women and Children CRS has set up large tents as “childfriendly spaces” to meet children’s psychological, health and education needs in camps. These places are of tremendous aid to parents who are looking for a safe place for their children, especially when trying to find work to support their families. CRS is collaborating with the United Nations, peer agencies, care centers and the government to register
Four Key Components for Haiti’s Recovery Improving Communities CRS will ensure that families have a safe and dignified environment in which they can live, work, learn and play. CRS will accomplish this through two key areas: shelter, and water and sanitation.
CRS will ensure that families have a safe and dignified environment.
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Shelter CRS is providing emergency shelters and sturdy transitional shelters, and helping to make the camp settlement and relocation sites livable. We will invest resources in the restoration of schools, hospitals, clinics and orphanages. Fall 2010
To date, CRS has provided emergency shelter material to more than 100,000 people. We are poised to help 40,000 people with transitional shelters and their relocation to safer areas. Water and Sanitation CRS has been providing water infrastructure, toilets, bathing areas, hand-washing stations and means for sanitation at camp settlements and health care facilities across the city. Through cash-for-work activities, we have cleared canals of their pollution and debris, and promoted hygiene awareness within the densely packed camps. Measures such as night lighting,
A young boy in Port-au-Prince’s Solino camp, where CRS carried out a cash-for-work program to clear canals in advance of the rainy season. Photo by David Snyder for CRS
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unaccompanied children and conduct family tracing and reunification. We plan to provide training for teachers and Haiti’s Ministry of Education inspectors, and further assistance to schools, orphanages and care centers. This might include minor rehabilitation of schools and their means for improved water and sanitation. We feel fortunate that we were able to continue our pre-earthquake support of monthly food rations to orphanages and schools that serve 100,000 orphans and vulnerable children. In some cases, we increased the food amount given the increase in numbers of children and need. Along the border, CRS will seek to prevent migration by assisting vulnerable families and expanding support for survivors of violence returning from the Dominican Republic. For women and children affected by HIV, CRS will support home-based care, economic activities, referrals for tuberculosis and other infections, and capacity of local social services. To date, CRS has provided monthly food distributions for 10,000 children across the country, and activities to
support another 2,000 children and their families in settlements across Port-au-Prince.
Boosting Income and Employment Opportunities for employment are essential to people’s ability to support their families, provide their children with better opportunities and contribute positively to society. CRS hopes that strengthened livelihoods will lessen people’s desire to migrate and increase their engagement in the rebuilding of their country. We will provide essential items for living (food and water), as well as for earning a living (training and technical assistance). CRS will support small-enterprise opportunities; work with local training centers to develop skills and link professionals with employment opportunities; identify market opportunities; support farmers with agricultural trainings; and expand saving and internal lending programs that build people’s assets and savings. To date, CRS has provided food to nearly 900,000 people, and employed more than 25,000 in livelihood activities.
Enhancing Relationships CRS recognizes the incredible potential for Catholics to come together for a strengthened, dynamic, enriched relationship with the people of Haiti. Through dialogue with the Catholic Church in the United States, the Catholic Church in Haiti, the Haitian diaspora and others, we will explore ways in which we can further these relationships for a transformative impact both in Haiti and here at home. CRS will provide regular reports from Haiti to Catholics in the United States, and develop creative strategies to engage with the Haitian diaspora and the Catholic business community. We also will help link the Church in Haiti and U.S.-based Catholic advocacy groups to establish priorities for proposed policy changes. Caroline Brennan is a CRS senior communications officer.
Above: At the Carradeux camp, CRS hired locals to build 40 latrines, 12 showers and several large water tanks for health and sanitation. Photo by Lane Hartill/CRS
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Left: A CRS-funded worker finishes the roof of a water tank in Acra camp. Photo by David Snyder for CRS
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Fall 2010
What You Help Make Possible Thanks to the overwhelming generosity of supporters in the United States, Catholic Relief Services can ensure that aid reaches those who need it most.
In the next five years, CRS will spend approximately $200 million to help the people of Haiti recover from their catastrophic loss. Following is a breakdown of our current spending.
CRS Spending in Haiti in the First Six Months
(as of June 30, 2010)
Spent so far in five-year plan: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $39,187,077 (in 5.5 months: January 12, 2010, to June 30, 2010) Comparison with Indian Ocean tsunami:. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $29,247,000 (in 6 months: December 26, 2004, to June 30, 2005)
Program Emergency Response* Health and Support to Hospitals
Amount Spent $11,526,738 $1,248,029
Food Security and Livelihoods
$14,105,963
Shelter and Community Infrastructure
$2,779,306
Water and Sanitation
$2,723,657
Education and Protection of Vulnerable People
$4,859,791
Church Partnership Support Costs** Total
$362,614 $1,580,979 $39,187,077
A group of children in the Petionville camp, where CRS has distributed thousands of shelter kits. I Photo by David Snyder for CRS
* Emergency Response includes expenditures in a number of sectors from the first days of the response. * *Support Costs: Of expenditures other than in-kind activity, at least 94 cents of every dollar goes to program service costs in Haiti, and no more than 6 cents goes to support costs.
After the earthquake, Catholics throughout the United States reached out to Haitians in faith and solidarity. Here, girls who live at the CRS-supported Little Friends of Jesus Orphanage show off “Hearts for Haiti� cards made by students at the Sacred Heart Academy in Honolulu, Hawaii. I Photo by Tom Price/CRS
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Emergency Update:
Promoting Peace in Sudan Early next year, the people of Southern Sudan will vote on whether or not to become an independent nation. This referendum is the key provision of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement that brought to an end decades of war. With most factors that have caused violence in the past—oil revenues, tribal animosities— still present, many have predicted that the referendum will plunge this part of Sudan back into the turmoil that killed and displaced millions of people. Catholic Relief Services has committed $4 million to see that this does not happen again. We are at work on a variety of peacebuilding projects—from getting members of different groups to talk to each other about the future, to funding a Catholic radio network that will broadcast accurate and reliable information—dispelling the rumors that too often lead to violence. “The Sudanese people, more than anyone else, know there has been too much violence in their country,” says Sean Callahan, CRS’ executive vice president of overseas operations. “As their country goes into the future, what is important is that all of its people feel that they have the power to determine their own destinies. If we can all help them achieve that, then the Sudanese can finally enjoy the peace and prosperity that is rightfully theirs.”
Above and left: CRS is working with volunteers who promote peaceful national elections through songs, skits and discussion in local marketplaces. I Photos by Debbie DeVoe/CRS
228 West Lexington Street Baltimore, Maryland 21201-3443
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888.277.7575 www.crs.org