Haiti's remarkable recovery, moreover, has been largely driven by Haitians themselves. Within neighbourhoods, community members have set priorities for rebuilding homes and infrastructure, ensuring that the unique risks faced by city-dwellers are satisfactorily addressed. Women, especially, have played an important role in this process. In one program aimed at rehabilitating 16 neighborhoods in Port-au-Prince, Petionville, and Delmas, for example, combating gender-based violence with improved public lighting has emerged as a major priority.
The UNDP has established community support centers to facilitate the reconstruction process, enabling some 30,000 families to take charge of repairing and rebuilding their homes to date. At the same time, more than 1,000 families have received $500 grants to buy quality construction materials through an innovative money-transfer scheme that uses mobile phones -- the first ever to support housing repairs.
The UNDP has also helped train more than 7,000 people in home reconstruction, strengthened Haiti's national disaster risk-management system, and launched environmental protection programs. The results have been significant and tangible -- a direct outcome of the international support that followed the earthquake and that remains a critical lifeline. The government of Haiti is now building on these achievements and developing a longer-term development roadmap toward a truly inclusive, resilient society. Haiti's remaining challenges demand the sustained support of the international community, but a horizon with fewer and smaller mountains is now in sight.
Correction: An earlier version of this story stated that 1 million cubic meters of earthquake debris had been recycled. In fact, only 30 percent of that 1 million cubic meters has been recycled, since not everything is recyclable.
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