© 2010 Carlos Vasquez
Mr. Haji Sohrab is the elder leader of a village in northern Sindh, Pakistan where 90 per cent was destroyed by the floods in August 2010.

Carlos Vasquez

27 November 2010, Sukkur district, Sindh Province, Pakistan

N 27d 58.89”
E 67d 54.62”

These numbers may not mean much to people here in Pakistan or elsewhere in this ever shrinking world. To information technology people these are clearly the coordinates for a geographical location, also known as Global Positioning System, or GPS.

© UNICEF/NYHQ2008-1288/Josh Estey
An elementary school in Banda Aceh. The entire city was devastated by the tsunami. The school is one of 160 quake-resistant, child-friendly schools built with UNICEF assistance in Aceh and Nias.

Current externalities affecting the environment – such as deforestation, climate change, migration, poverty and food insecurity – will have a great impact on communities across the globe. People everywhere, especially children, will face monumental, interconnected challenges that will alter their ways of life at the most basic level.

School design and construction

©2010 Carlos VasquezVictor and Father Louis, Montagne Jaquot-Merlin, Haiti.

23 Feb 2010 – Victor Vincent Kinyanjui, from Kenya and WASH specialist for UNICEF Sierra Leone, and I set out early in morning to visit a rural school on top of mountain Jaquot-Merlin. The school is run by Father Louis Marrie from France. In order to get there we had to cross a dry river that shows clear signs of bank erosion due to heavy water flow during the rainy season.

© 2010 Carlos Vasquez
Port-au-Prince. Water bladder.

By Carlos Vasquez

March 2010 – Water and sanitation seem to be the one of the top priorities in cases of emergencies. Health and nutrition are also part of the core services that people require most urgently.

School design and construction

© UNICEF/NYHQ2010-0156/Shehzad NooraniRose-Laure Gedeon, 13, and Windelyne Milford, 15,(left-right) walk past rubble with items they received during a distribution of newly arrived care packages for children, at the UNICEF-assisted Foye Zanmi Jezi orphanage, in the Lilavois neighbourhood of Port-au-Prince, the capital. The quake destroyed both the orphanage building and the adjacent primary school but the children were playing outside at the time and all survived.

When Columbus first arrived in the new world, he established his first settlement on what is today Haiti. The first university, hospital and the first cathedral in the Americas were built on this island; Española.

I was scheduled to fly to Port-Au-Prince on Sunday the 14th from the airport in Dominican Republic, after having checked my backpack I was told to gather my belongings and go back to the UNICEF office in Santo Domingo. The orders from UNICEF were for me to attend meetings and review materials for potential prefab structures.