The Conrad N. Hilton Foundation announced that its board has approved $575,000 in grants to three organizations that are helping children severely traumatized by the devastating 7.0 earthquake in Haiti eight months ago that killed 220,000 people and injured 330,000 more.
LOS ANGELES – September 8, 2010. The Conrad N. Hilton Foundation announced that its board has approved $575,000 in grants to three organizations that are helping children severely traumatized by the devastating 7.0 earthquake in Haiti eight months ago that killed 220,000 people and injured 330,000 more.
Partners In Health and SOS Children’s Villages International, both laureates of the Hilton Humanitarian Prize, will receive $300,000 over two years for a collaborative project to help orphans and other children affected by the earthquake. The Global Fund for Children will receive $275,000 over three years to partner with locally led, community-based organizations in Haiti that are assisting vulnerable children. The new grants bring the Hilton Foundation’s contributions to Haiti to $1,075,000.
“The Hilton Foundation is dedicated to improving the lives of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged people around the world and no one is more vulnerable than children after a major disaster,” said Steven M. Hilton, president and chief executive officer of the Hilton Foundation. “Recovery and rebuilding has been incredibly challenging in Haiti. But we believe that these organizations that have excellent track records in Haiti and around the world can bring much needed assistance to children still suffering from the earthquake.”
The $300,000 grant to Partners In Health (PIH) and SOS Children’s Villages International (SOS) will go towards a $1.3 million project to develop a permanent facility called Zanmi Beni outside of Port-au-Prince that will provide housing, medical services, education support and psychosocial care, as well as daily needs services to orphans and other children. Boston-based PIH, which is well known for providing medical care for the poor and vulnerable citizens of Haiti for more than 25 years, acquired the facility after it found 50 abandoned children living in one room in a hospital shortly after the earthquake. SOS, headquartered in Innsbruck, Austria, is a leading provider of long-term care for orphaned children worldwide and has been in Haiti for 30 years where it has two villages caring for about 600 children. One of its villages, Santo, includes a large school adjacent to the proposed new facility. In addition to the 50 abandoned children, Zanmi Beni will also serve the needs of 400 other children being cared for by SOS since the earthquake.
Global Fund for Children (GFC), headquartered in Washington, DC, will use the grant to partner with ten locally led, community-based organizations in Haiti over the next three years that are assisting children impacted by the earthquake, including orphans and children affected by AIDS. UNICEF estimates that there are now 500,000 vulnerable children in Haiti who lack access to basic care and services. GFC is seeking out local organizations providing early childhood development services for children under the age of eight who are located in communities just outside of Port-au-Prince where hundreds of thousands of people displaced by the earthquake have temporarily settled, as well as those located within marginalized areas of the capitol who have not received assistance from other agencies. Community-based organizations are uniquely well-positioned to help rebuild their own communities over the long-term and GFC has successfully supported such organizations in other post-disaster settings. For example, in 2005 GFC supported the development of 11 such child-focused organizations in communities impacted by the Thailand tsunami. Five years later, all 11 organizations continue to thrive.
Shortly after the earthquake, the Hilton Foundation gave $500,000 in grants to organizations providing emergency and humanitarian aid in Haiti that helped more than 200,000 people. Those grants included: $250,000 to Partners In Health to coordinate logistics and provide 146,940 emergency medical care visits, including examinations and treatment for 30,000 children; a $25,000 grant to the International Medical Corps (IMC) to provide logistics assistance in the distribution of $4 million of emergency supplies and the provision of nutrition and psychosocial support for 13,000 earthquake-affected children; a grant of $148,000 to Catholic Relief Services for the provision of Water Sanitation Hygiene (WASH) services for more than 56,000 temporary camp residents; and $77,000 to the William J. Clinton Foundation to support the donation of a former Cirque du Soleil tent for use as temporary government office space.
The Conrad N. Hilton Foundation was created in 1944 by international business pioneer Conrad N. Hilton, who founded Hilton Hotels and left his fortune to help the world’s disadvantaged and vulnerable people. The Foundation currently conducts strategic initiatives in five priority areas: providing safe water, ending chronic homelessness, preventing substance abuse, caring for vulnerable children, and extending Conrad Hilton’s support for the work of Catholic Sisters. Following selection by an independent international jury, the Foundation annually awards the $1.5 million Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize to a nonprofit organization doing extraordinary work to reduce human suffering. Since its inception, the Foundation has awarded nearly $900 million in grants and distributed $80 million in 2009. The Foundation’s current assets are nearly $2 billion. For more information, please visit www.hiltonfoundation.org.