Surrounded by her meagre possessions of a foam mattress, a blanket, a few pots, a bucket and a basin, Deliverance “Tite Soeur” Boislo struggles to get through her daily chores in the bare two-roomed concrete shell that has been home to her family for the past 10 months.

In the tented city in Mais Gate for Haitians displaced by the 12 January earthquake, baby Sebastian brings a sparkle to his mother Lucienne’s eyes. At eight months, Sebastian is alert, sitting up, clambering over his mother and almost standing on his own.

Twelve months after the earthquake turned much of the capital Port-au-Prince to rubble, life has moved slowly in Haiti. While the main roads have been cleared of much of the debris and bodies under it, throngs of people still hunker down under tarpaulins in spontaneous camps out of the glare of the midday sun.

“It’s better to reconstruct the children and young people than repair the adults, because children are the foundations upon which a nation stands,” says 16-year-old Luxon Julien, as he presents the results of three days of deliberations to youth participants gathered in Jacmel.

Joseph Charles is father to three girls, two of them 12-year old twins. A rice farmer who made a very modest income, the earthquake completely flattened his house and left the family with no shelter nor means with which to buy food or water.

Ezana Tales, a mother of three recently separated from her husband, tells in her own words the impact that the January 2010 earthquake had on her and her children. Her children attend Delmas 33 Dei Gloria Primary School in a Haitian suburb.