While some WJ students were tanning on faraway beaches or lounging at home, Emily and Charlotte Fallick spent winter break in Haiti, helping rebuild houses and offering support to displaced victims after the devastating 7.0 magnitude earthquake on January 12, 2010.

“The devastation is very prominent,” said Emily. “Refugee camps, piles of burning trash and ruins were everywhere.”

The Fallick family travelled to Haiti with their synagogue, Adat Shalom, and spent the majority of the trip working in Leogane, the epicenter of the earthquake, where they were building earthquake-proof duplexes for people currently living in the “tent cities.” Over 500 people were killed in Leogane during the earthquake, many of whom were priests and nuns working at the Sainte Rose de Lima School there, according to the Washington Post.

“I personally spent most of the time making trusses, the triangular foundations for the roof,” said Emily.

However, because of the lack of proper equipment, such as power tools and metal gussets, they were able to make about eight trusses in four days, which would have taken only one day in the United States.

“Obviously it felt good to help, but I felt like I wasn’t doing very much,” said Fallick. “For the same price I paid for the trip we could have hired 49 Haitians from the village.”

The earthquake took place Tuesday Jan. 12, 2010 and caused extreme destruction. An estimated 316,000 people died and millions more were left injured and homeless. Haiti, a country with a long history of social and economic problems, is having a hard time recovering from such a disaster. According to the CIA World Factbook, Haiti is the poorest country in its hemisphere. Eighty percent of the people in Haiti are below the poverty line. The earthquake it experienced in 2010 damaged Haiti’s already weak economic system, since Port-au-Prince, its capital, was ruined in the natural disaster. Due to this, its Gross Domestic Product contracted about 5.1 percent in the year following the earthquake.

After the earthquake, relief efforts poured in from all over the world. The United States alone sent thousands of troops. Private nonprofit agencies sent in volunteers and doctors and donated money to the reconstruction effort.

Since the horrific natural disaster, the Haitian government has also launched many programs in the hope of assisting the millions of people still living in poverty. One of these programs, called “Aba Grangou,” is a national food effort designed to feed 2.2 million school children. “Aba Grangou,” in Haitian, means “Down with Hunger.”