The International Rescue Committee (IRC) is building washing facilities and latrines for thousands of displaced Haitians living in makeshift outdoor settlements in the capital city.

The International Rescue Committee is launching healing, recreational and protection programs for Haitian children and expanding efforts to reunite separated children with their families.

The Bel Air neighborhood in downtown Port-au-Prince has seen its share of troubles including poverty, high unemployment, gang violence and other social ills. But nothing prepared the usually resilient community for the earthquake that struck on January 12.

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) is teaming up with Management Sciences for Health (MSH), the global nonprofit health development organization, to respond to the relief effort in Haiti.

The IRC and MSH previously worked together in Pakistan after the 2005 earthquake and in Southern Sudan, to restore the health system following the end of the 20-year civil war there.

There is surely no more symbolic site in Haiti than Champs de Mars, Port-au-Prince's main park and place of political power. On the park’s west side sits the now ruined Presidential Palace.  To the north is the Dessalines barracks—which has been reduced to a façade—named after Jean-Jacques Dessalines, a leader of the Haitian independence movement.  Looming over the park is an unfinished tower built to mark the bicentennial of the founding of the free Republic of Haiti but never completed because of political turmoil.