<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"Sponsored child Leonel Novas, 17, was thrilled to discover he could play a role in World Vision\u2019s relief efforts following the Haiti quake.\n\n\r\n\r\n Leonel lives in the Dominican Republic, near the border with Haiti, and is the child of a Haitian mother and Dominican father.\n \nImmediately following the quake, thousands of injured took rides on crowded public transport to Jimani\u2014a Dominican border town\u2014to seek treatment in hospitals there.\n\n\r\n\rThe hospitals opened their doors to the wounded, but doctors, who arrived from all over the world in response to the emergency, could seldom speak the Creole language of their patients and families.\n\n\rLeonel accepted an invitation to a join a team of three World Vision translators to meet the communications needs.\n \nLeonel says when he arrived at the Good Samaritan hospital, about 300 patients had turned up to a hospital designed to accommodate 60. Those seeking treatment, often with horrific injuries, lay in the hallways and were later placed in large tents in the hospital grounds.\n \nHe says doctors and patients were trying to communicate by hand signals, which simply added to the chaos and confusion.\n \n\u201CI am able to make sure the doctors get the right message from the patients,\u201D he says.\n \nLeonel says he is also able to reassure family members of the wounded by relaying to them doctors\u2019 assessments and treatment plans.\n \nAt the same time, he finds the work emotionally challenging.\n \n\u201CI remember a little girl who had to have both her feet amputated. She cried and cried throughout the night,\u201D he says.\n \nLeonel says he can identify with many of the suffering because he has also been a victim of a natural disaster. In 2004, his home was destroyed when flooding swept through Jimini, killing several members of his family and dozens of his fellow sponsored children. He found temporary shelter in the home of a local pastor, and World Vision provided his family with food and clothing in the immediate aftermath.\n \n\u201CI feel deeply touched by their pain,\u201D he says of the quake victims. \u201CI feel I need to help, just as I was helped back in 2004.\u201D\n \nHe believes God also prepared him for his role. Having lived all his life in the Spanish-speaking Dominican Republic, his Creole language skills had suffered. However, recently he had been practicing the language with a friend.\n \nLeonel says in addition to helping him during the flooding disaster of 2004, World Vision has been instrumental in helping him progress at school, providing access to computers and school supplies. He is now in the 11th grade and hopes to go on to study languages and computer science.\n \nIn addition to providing translators to Jimani hospitals, World Vision is providing doctors, nurses, food, water and tents.\n\n\r\n\r\n\n Navensky Charles might be surrounded by the stench of death, but he is alive.\n \n Like all patients at L\u2019Hospital General in downtown Port-au-Prince, the 18-month-old cannot be accommodated in a hospital building. The few buildings still standing are unsafe to use.\n Consequently, he lies in a hospital bed in a street outside. Regularly, trucks rumble past, carrying corpses. They come from the city morgue about a block away. Outside the morgue, hundreds of bodies are stacked three deep.\n \nBut Navensky is alive. When his house started to collapse, his father, Jerome, dashed upstairs to rescue him. They both made it outside just as their home caved in. Navensky suffered a broken shoulder, leg and arm during the hurried escape.\n \nAs darkness was falling, and the streets were in chaos, Jerome and his wife, Nadia, had to wait until morning before carrying Navensky to the hospital. The walk took nearly two hours. It was not until the early afternoon that hard-pressed medical staff could treat him.\n \nWorld Vision is supporting the hospital by supplying essential medical supplies such as surgical gloves, syringes, antibiotics, and bandages.\n \nNavensky moans softly and flinches if he thinks you are about to touch him. Otherwise, he does not complain. Nadia and Jerome will spend the night anxiously watching over him. They have no home to return to anyway.\n \nJerome is thankful for the humanitarian organizations who have come to help following the worst quake in Haiti\u2019s history for 200 years.\n \n\u201CIf it was not for the NGOs [non-governmental organizations], the Haitian people would be lost,\u201D he says.\n \nTo learn more, visit World Vision ACT:S. \n"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.relevantmagazine.com/reject-apathy/worldview/features/19948-finding-hope-in-the-heartbreak>