The constant exodus of at least 7,000 children by traffickers since the January earthquake, according to one monitoring organization, has taxed many groups, but has not dampened the vim and vigor of volunteers.
SAVING LIVES
Such is the case of Luz María Toledo Milano, a Haitian social worker at the One Respe foundation. Last September, the reporters saw her walking, an X-ray in hand, through the dusty street of a slum for Haitian immigrants, west of Santo Domingo, looking for money to take a boy who had swallowed a screw to the hospital. Anyone within reach she asked for help, be it cash or transportation or to find a doctor.
Through sheer will, the volunteers find extra food, teachers for the kids, blankets, dry clothes, and continuously prod Dominican authorities to help them reunite kids with their families. The volunteers are like junior mayors and counselors.
.
|
|
Toledo, better known as Carmen in the Haitian barrios of San Cristóbal, west of Santo Domingo, walks through the streets of Villa Penca and greets each resident by name and seems to know everybody's daily problems. Sometimes she argues with them in Creole, rebukes them, chastises them, but at the end celebrates with a burst of laughter.
``It grieves me to see how the people here live,'' she said, standing outside a small wooden house. ``This woman has seven children, no husband.''
Bentodina Jiménez runs Acción Callejera, a social service agency in Santiago de los Caballeros. Jiménez said before the quake, which killed an estimated 300,000 people, the organization looked after an average of 15 to 17 Haitian children. |
Now, it is in charge of about 30 -- and has managed to secure 25 scholarships. The money comes from different religious and educational organizations in the United States.
Jiménez explained that the children are severely traumatized by the time they get to these agencies, after suffering from beatings, lack of food, sleep and the loss of family.
The Miami Herald documented this week how traffickers took advance of the desperation of children and their parents to smuggle thousands of kids undeterred across the porous border between both countries, where scores of kids end up as beggars and prostitutes.
So the counselors say the first order of business is food: Give children breakfast and lunch and, little by little, the psychologists and counselors get the kids to speak up, start classes, learn about the dangers of the street.
Still every week, the workers find a new face in line with a horror story:
A boy said he had to walk about 200 miles in four or five days with traffickers from Haiti to Santiago de los Caballeros.
``They arrive skinny, with little long faces,'' said Cynthia Lora, educational coordinator for Acción Callejera.
Lora said many of the boys are exploited by older street kids and adults who force them to beg for money. Lora said the children can collect an average of $10 per day, which they turn over to a boss or relative in exchange for a little food or place to live. Some of the kids have no relatives so they try to pool their money and stay together.
``They live alone, huddled, under deplorable sanitary conditions,'' Jiménez said.
AT THE BORDER
After the earthquake, Dominican President Leonel Fernández ordered border crossings opened to treat the injured at hospitals and clinics. Faced with a flood of children, the country's National Council for Children and Adolescents put together a plan to protect vulnerable Haitian children in the Dominican Republic.
It's a guideline for the Dominican government and nongovernmental institutions' humanitarian response to protect the rights of minors, according to an administration spokesman.
Through September, 390 minors -- 212 boys and 178 girls had received help. At least 335 have returned to Haiti. The government said 60 of the kids were there without parents, so they tracked down relatives in Haiti and reunified the children. But 52 children remain in temporary shelters.
SCHOOLING
Back at the crowded house of the sisters of Saint John the Evangelist Sister Nidia, a dozen nuns and volunteers from Europe take in children, feed and educate them and try to look for their parents. At the same time, they offer the scholarships to Haitian girls.
With a baby in her arms, Zuluaga checks the homework being done by Wislyn, a 12-year-old girl, who a man tried to rape at the end of the three-day trek through Dominican territory. Her mother can't support her because she has eight other children.
Sister Nidia, who graduated in law from the University of Port-au-Prince and has run the center for the past 10 years, is widely credited by volunteers and human rights activists as an example of how moxie can change the lives of the children.
She is humbly grateful for the recognition but admits that even on some days she has to convince herself that the problem of Haiti and its children will have a solution.
``Sometimes, there are days when I have to turn to God to fill myself with hope,'' she said. ``Other days, I'm encouraged when I see the children we pick up. They are so intelligent, so creative, that I think someday they'll get ahead.''
|
