In Haiti, Aid Workers Help Orphans Find Relatives

Before the earthquake, Ruthza St. Louis was an accredited therapist in Port-au-Prince, specializing in counseling rape victims. Now she has become a detective of sorts, walking the city's rubble-strewn streets, talking to children who are on their own and then using every resource she can to locate caring relatives who can take them in.

This sleuthing is no small feat in a country where an estimated 1.5 million survivors of the Jan. 12 earthquake no longer have homes, let alone official records like birth certificates. But St. Louis is volunteering for the U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF), which, along with other aid groups, is working to register as many kids as possible who were orphaned or separated from their parents during the disaster, and then trying to reconnect them with their families. So far, UNICEF says, it has registered close to 200 children, and it expects to have thousands logged by year's end. (See pictures of UNICEF's Haiti child registry.)

Launched in early February with the help of Haitian officials and aid groups like Save the Children, UNICEF's child registry is similar to one the organization created in South Asia after the tsunami in 2004. In the Indonesian territory of Aceh, the worst-hit area, aid workers took five months to compile the names of about 3,000 displaced children, 240 of whom were eventually reunited with a parent. Hundreds more went to live with relatives whom aid workers found by going door to door and matching information about birthmarks and other identifying details. Marie de la Soudière, who is coordinating the Haitian registry, says that in the 30 years she has spent helping children in disaster and war zones around the globe, the vast majority of kids — child soldiers included — have an immediate or extended family member who, once contacted, is willing to take them in. (See pictures drawn by children for Haiti's survivors.)

That's the goal for Haitian children like 13-year-old Yvolene Avril, whose father died years ago and whose mother was killed during the quake by a falling wall. Aside from two half brothers from her mother's previous relationships, Yvolene can't recall any other family members. (Since the quake, one of the boys' fathers has agreed to care for them but not for their half sister.) One of St. Louis's jobs is to try to jog Yvolene's memory by asking about things like schools she's attended, friends she's had, birthdays and other celebrations. As St. Louis interviews Yvolene, a shy, slender teen whose sentences are as short as her braided hair, the girl whispers, "I don't want anyone to take me away."

De la Soudière agrees; one of her slogans is "No to orphanages." Part of what makes UNICEF's mission so urgent is the rampant child trafficking in Haiti, the western hemisphere's poorest nation. There are some responsible orphanages in the country, to be sure, but there are also scores of loosely monitored ones, and children who end up in the latter often get "adopted" by people who turn them into household slaves called restaveks or force them into prostitution. One of the more bizarre elements of the saga surrounding the 10 U.S. missionaries who were caught trying to ferry 33 children out of the country without proper documents is that the Dominican man who served as the missionaries' legal adviser, Jorge Puello, is wanted in El Salvador and the U.S. on human-trafficking charges, accusations he denies. (See exclusive pictures from Haiti's devastating earthquake.)

To keep children out of risk, de la Soudière needs the help of people like St. Louis and Edith Philistin. A Haitian nurse volunteering on the U.S. naval hospital ship in Port-au-Prince Bay, Philistin was tending to a 6-year-old boy named Kenzie, who was getting emergency treatment for a fractured leg. Both of his parents had died in the quake, and when he couldn't name any relatives — child psychologists say it's not unusual in traumatic situations for a 6-year-old's memory to get cloudy — doctors on the ship were inclined to send Kenzie to an orphanage.

That's when Philistin sprang into action. Working in conjunction with UNICEF, she started asking Kenzie questions about people he knew, where he went to school and what he liked to do. Eventually he mentioned a friend named Benito, and Philistin was able to track him down in Kenzie's neighborhood. Benito then led her to a house full of people he said were the boy's relatives. (See a brief history of baby lifts.)

"I asked them the same questions I asked Kenzie because I had to make sure they could be trusted," says Philistin. "The family thought he was dead, but then I pointed to the big boat out in the sea." This family was happy to bring Kenzie home, and aid workers are checking regularly to make sure he's settling in O.K.

Yvolene made it onto the Haitian registry after a concerned neighbor heard a radio program about the UNICEF initiative and contacted the agency. Aid workers have since found a temporary home for her with the godmother of one of her half brothers.

One of the key components of the registry's efforts is providing support — both moral and material — for such caregivers, whom UNICEF recruits from the children's neighborhoods. The amount of food, clothing and education assistance provided to foster families is not a lot — agencies don't want to encourage people to step forward just for the aid — but it's enough to make caregivers feel as if they're getting adequate backup. (See the destruction in Haiti from the air.)

Meanwhile, de la Soudière is working to build as extensive a network as possible of local NGOs and volunteers. This not only creates a larger army of detectives to find relatives and advocate for children's best interests, but it also helps these aid workers persuade relatives and foster families to take children in, because they know they'll have a big system of support when they do.

This community backing may have factored into the offer Yvolene's temporary caregiver made in late February to let the girl live with her on a permanent basis if UNICEF can't locate a legal relative. That would be good news to any aid worker. But to St. Louis, who herself became homeless after the quake, the relief is all the sweeter, she says, knowing that "I've saved a child from a life on the streets." —With reporting by Jason Tedjasukmana / Jakarta, Indonesia

See TIME's complete coverage of the Haiti earthquake.

See a video of TIME staffers finding a 94-year-old earthquake survivor in Haiti.