To Carrefour, the women's association "Mouvman Famn Aktif Kafou" (MOFKA) prepares the reconstruction "When we began working here, the streets were congested by the rubble" said Magdala Jean Pierre, which is at the head of MOFKA, an organization working since 1999 to the social integration of women "We also do training because we can not ask to integrate socially the women if they are unable to read or write."

Immediately after the earthquake, Magdalene began to develop a project to help women of her community to recover. For the past 10 months, she is in charge of a large work of collection of debris funded by the World Food Programme (WFP) and supported by local authorities.

"We wanted to clear the neighborhoods and help families to rebuild their lives [...] As long as the debris will be in the streets, there will be people in the camps, the country will not be rebuilt" tirelessly repeats Magdala.

Her project is not unique in the area affected by the earthquake, but the work of MOFKA is special because here, 80% of people who handle the shovel and push wheelbarrows are women. Every day, workers earn 200 gourdes (USD$5), the equivalent of minimum wage decreed by the Haitian Government.

The project of Carrefour began in October 2010. Since then, more than a thousand people work six days a week in more than forty neighborhoods of the city. Their efforts are bearing fruit. Here and there, new walls, new structures begin to rise on open sites. "We did not think we were going to go to ten months with the project. We have already removed a lot of rubble, but there is still much work to do," concluded Magdala.

HL/ HaitiLibre