9 March 2010, San Ramon, USA
Amma is starting an orphanage in Haiti in order to take care of children who lost their relatives in the earthquake of January 12, 2010.
A four-story house rented in Laboulle, a suburb in the hills outside of Port-au-Prince, is in the process of being converted into an orphanage. The orphanage will initially assume care for 25 orphaned children.
Reports say that after the earthquake, Haiti is now home to nearly one million orphaned children.
Other Haiti relief-and-rehabilitation work includes the shipment of a container of medical supplies, which was sent two weeks following the disaster. The supplies included assorted medications, surgical equipment, feeding and drainage tubes, assorted wound-care supplies, diagnostic supplies, syringes, needles, sheets and blankets, drapes, tents, sleeping bags, face masks, obstetric and infant-care supplies, wheelchairs, crutches, braces, splints, protein powders, saline solution and disinfectants.
The orphanage in Haiti will be the third such institution; the others being Amrita Niketan in Kerala, India (1989) and Amrita Watoto Boma in Nairobi (2009).
The new orphanage in Haiti is being developed specifically through the Mata Amritanandamayi Center’s Health Care Charities, Inc., and the Amma Foundation of Canada.
-Das