
Two Compassion International staffers from Colorado Springs were working in Haiti at the time of the earthquake and they remain missing, Compassion spokesman Stephan Archer said today.
Of the 80 Compassion workers in Haiti, only a handful have been confirmed to be OK, Archer said.
“We have not heard from most of our workers,” he said. The bulk of Compassion workers are located in Port-au-Prince, which has suffered catastrophic quake damage.
Archer did not reveal the names of the missing workers from the Springs office.
Compassion International, headquartered in Colorado Springs, is a faith-based child development agency with 2,500 employees worldwide. It has 537,000 sponsors who financially support tens of thousands of children.
In Haiti, the organization has 237 child development centers that serve more than 64,000 children, most of whom have not been accounted for following the temblor, Archer said.
On Wednesday, the organization sent three workers from a Compassion office in Florida to Haiti, with satellite phones to assess damage and search for Compassion staffers. So far, only one person has called in to report, but was too overwhelmed with emotion to speak, Archer said.
The mood at Compassion headquarters is “somber,” Archer said.
Compassion president and CEO Wess Stafford said in a statement today that the agency will do “what we can to provide immediate relief and continue, without interruption, our long-term work with the children of Haiti.”
I wish them all the very best in this trying time.
MY prayers are with the people from Compassion.