Sponsored Child Joins World Vision Haiti Relief Team
29 January, 5:39 pm
Sponsored child Leonel Novas, 17, was thrilled to discover he can play a role in World Vision’s relief efforts following the Haiti Quake.
Leonel lives in the Dominican Republic, near the border with Haiti, and is the child of a Haitian mother and Dominican father.
Immediately following the quake, thousands of injured took rides on crowded public transport to Jimini—a Dominican border town—to seek treatment in hospitals there.
The hospitals opened their doors to the wounded but doctors, who arrived from all over the world in response to the emergency, could not speak the Creole language of their patients and families.
Leonel accepted an invitation to a join a team of three World Vision translators to meet the communications needs.
Leonel says when he arrived at the Good Samaritan hospital, about 300 patients had turned up to a hospital designed to accommodate 60. Those seeking treatment, often with horrific injuries, lay in the hallways and were later placed in large tents in the hospital grounds.
He says doctors and patients were trying to communicate by hand signals which simply added to the chaos and confusion.
“I am able to make sure the doctors get the right message from the patients,” he says.
Leonel says that he is also able to reassure family members of the wounded by relaying to them doctors’ assessments and treatment plans.
At the same time, he finds the work emotionally challenging.
“I remember a little girl who had to have both her feet amputated. She cried and cried throughout the night,” he says.
Leonel says he can identify with many of the suffering because he has also been a victim of a natural disaster. In 2004, his home was destroyed when flooding swept through Jimini, killing several members of his family and dozens of his fellow sponsored children. He found temporary shelter in the home of a local pastor, and World Vision provided his family with food and clothing in the immediate aftermath.
“I feel deeply touched by their pain,” he says of the quake victims. “I feel I need to help, just as I was helped back in 2004,” he says.
He believes God also prepared him for his role. Having lived all his life in the Spanish-speaking Dominican Republic, his Creole language skills had suffered. However, recently he had been practising the language with a friend.
Leonel says in addition to helping him during the flooding disaster of 2004, World Vision has been instrumental in helping him progress at school, providing access to computers and school supplies. He is now in the 11th grade and hopes to go on to study languages and computer science.
Child Sponsorship allows children to break free from the cycle of poverty and empowers them to help others in need. You can make a difference too by sponsoring a child today.
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1 response so far ↓
1 LR // 30 Mar 2010 at 9:46 pm
Everybody should do so and give a sponsorship to this poor people.
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