AMERICAS: HAITI: WORKERS BUILD HOMES FOR VICTIMS OF QUAKE

Workers take pride in building 'T-shelters' for homeless Haitians

CNS REPORT -- Five days a week, Ginou Vincent makes the hourlong trek on exhaust-filled, congested streets to build prefabricated shelters for people, like herself, left homeless by last year's earthquake. It's a long trek from Carrefour, west of Port-au-Prince, to the Varreux Yard in the city's Jacomin neighborhood. But Vincent knows if she fails to show up for work, a family might have to wait a little longer to escape one of the squalid settlements that sprouted after the magnitude 7 temblor forced 1.5 million people out of their homes. "I'm very proud of the work," said Vincent, who lived in central Port-au-Prince at the time of the quake. "It makes me feel good. I give all I have to help those people." The money Vincent earns helps put her four children, ages 9-15, through school. She said she tries to save a little to get a place of her own, but it is hard because life has become expensive since the disaster. Vincent is one of 146 workers producing transitional shelters, or "T-shelters," under a program coordinated by Catholic Relief Services and funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development. The workers are divided into six teams. Together they produced about 40 shelter kits a day. Since starting in May, the workers have produced about 2,500 of the 192-square-foot shelters, said Eddy Ambroise, the yard's manager.

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