Jasmine is among uncounted thousands of children who were left traumatized by the earthquake

Haiti’s Plas Timoun offers play therapy to young quake victims

PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI - When counselors asked the children at the Plas Timoun psychological therapy center to draw, what came out on the paper were images of crumbled houses, severed limbs and blood spurting from people trapped under the ruins.

But Jasmine Etelus, 8, was drawing another kind of house the other day. It was a two-story, pink-painted structure in the gingerbread tradition of Port-au-Prince, with a blazing sun on the mountain-lined horizon behind it.

“It’s for a wedding,” she explained.

Jasmine is among uncounted thousands of children who were left traumatized by the earthquake that ravaged Haiti on Jan. 12, killing or maiming their parents and siblings and destroying their homes. But she is also among the approximately 600 children cared for at Plas Timoun, “Children’s Park” in Creole, a little haven run by Haiti’s Ministry of Youth and Sports...more

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