Past Winners

People displaced by the earthquake

Egan Award winners visited people displaced by the earthquake at the Petionville club camp. CRS provides cash-for-work jobs to residents to improve the camp's infrastructure. Photo by Jen Hardy/CRS

In October 2010, two winners of the Eileen Egan Award for Journalistic Excellence–accompanied by Catholic Relief Services staff–traveled to Haiti to witness the recovery process 9 months after the devastating earthquake. You can read more about their experiences in the following articles written for their publications.

During 7 days of travel, the journalists had a chance to see various CRS-supported projects, including jobs for residents of Port-au-Prince camps, the destroyed and soon-to-be rebuilt St. Francois de Sales hospital, and transitional shelters being constructed within people's original communities. They also met with community leaders who are spearheading a CRS-supported pilot project that involves crushing rubble on-site into useful gravel and sand.

For the second half of the trip, the winners visited the south department of Haiti and saw how the earthquake continues to affect lives far from the epicenter near Port-au-Prince. Rural families still cope with increased household size due to displacement from the quake, and CRS offers a well-rounded set of support services to aid these agricultural communities. The journalists hiked into a remote village to see how healthcare for new babies is delivered on foot, pushed through towering cassava fields to understand how improved varieties are increasing the amount of food available to families, and drank fresh coconut milk with a generous community savings group that now can borrow internally at 3 percent interest instead the 25 percent charged by external lenders.

Stories About the Trip

Congratulations to our 2011 Egan Award winners, announced June 22, 2011.