Overview

Haiti has a long history of underdevelopment and political instability. Haiti is beset by widespread poverty, economic decline, unemployment, poor governance, and severe violence.

Haiti currently has a population of about 8 million people, and 1 million of those inhabitants are abandoned or orphaned children.

Haiti is a small island (it actually shares an island with the Dominican Republic) and with a surface area of just 27,797 square kilometers (km2), Haiti is second only to Barbados as the most densely populated country (306 people per km2) in the Americas.




Here are some staggering facts about the situation in Haiti:

• Haiti is the poorest country in the western hemisphere
• 50%  of all Haitian households live in extreme poverty using the  U.S. standard of a $1 per day
• Extremely poor households have about twice as many children as do the nonpoor.
• The country’s per capita GDP, has fallen by about 50 percent to $332 in the last two decades
• Most of the approximately 3.9 million who are extremely poor live in rural areas.
• About 4 in every 10 adults cannot read and write.
• More than 80% do not have access to clean drinking water.
• In rural areas only 10 percent of the inhabitants have electricity and just 3 percent have a telephone.
• The unemployment rate is highest in urban areas and runs close to 49%
• As many as 58 percent of residents in the metropolitan area feel unsafe “often or most of the time” in their own home. 
• Haiti has one of the world’s weakest police forces. There are 63 police officers per 100,000 people, less than a quarter of the regional average of 283 per 100,000 and only a third of the average for sub-Saharan African countries.

Haiti is in our backyard, but yet it is often overlooked. Many charitable organizations and international adoption efforts are focused in Africa while Haiti goes unnoticed.

Chances for Children was formed specifically to focus on helping to improve lives for the children of Haiti. Haiti needs help to get it’s country back to stability. The future of the country rests in the hands of it’s current and future leaders. It is our belief that by focusing on the children of Haiti, its future leaders, we can begin to pave the way to solvency.