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The opening of Zanmi Beni, a home just outside of Port-au-Prince for abandoned and physically and developmentally disabled children, is one of PIH/ZL’s proudest accomplishments since the earthquake. Zanmi Beni, which means “blessed friends” in Haitian Creole, now provides refuge and support for 48 children.
These children—whose medical, educational, and personal needs were likely to be neglected during Haiti’s arduous rebuilding period—were living in the pediatric ward of Port-au-Prince’s General Hospital, which was badly damaged in the earthquake, leaving the children essentially homeless. In response to a desperate plea on behalf of the hospital’s head administrator, Marlaine Thompson, PIH/ZL entered a partnership with Operation Blessing International to create a stable and caring environment for these unaccompanied minors.
A permanent home was purchased and renovated by the two organizations. And an army of roughly 84 clinicians, caretakers, and support staff have been employed to provide the highest possible quality of long-term care these infants, toddlers, children, and teenagers will require. Serving developmentally challenged children is a new area for PIH/ZL, and we are very fortunate to have SOS Children’s Villages – an international nonprofit that specializes in creating loving family environments for children who have been abandoned or orphaned – partnering with us. SOS has been working in Haiti for 30 years.
Going forward, PIH/ZL hopes to use the lessons learned at this evolving center to help ensure a future in Haiti in which every child, regardless of his or her background or disabilities, has the opportunity to thrive.
Beth Haller, Ph.D., is Co-Director of the Global Alliance for Disability in Media and Entertainment (www.gadim.org). A former print journalist, she is a member of the Advisory Board for the National Center on Disability and Journalism (https://ncdj.org/). Haller is Professor Emerita in the Department of Mass Communication at Towson University in Maryland, USA. Haller is co-editor of the 2020 "Routledge Companion to Disability and Media" (with Gerard Goggin of University of Sydney & Katie Ellis of Curtin University, Australia). She is author of "Representing Disability in an Ableist World: Essays on Mass Media" (Advocado Press, 2010) and the author/editor of Byline of Hope: Collected Newspaper and Magazine Writing of Helen Keller (Advocado Press, 2015). She has been researching disability representation in mass media for 30+ years. She is adjunct faculty in the Disability Studies programs at the City University of New York (CUNY) and the University of Texas-Arlington.
From Partners in Health:
