In Haiti ... the world from her mother's side.

• Author: Troutman, Emily
• Position: 2010 Haiti earthquake victims

AS THE EARTHQUAKE shook the house around her, ten-year-old Dessica ran outside and into a field behind her small street. "Did you run out alone?" 1 asked. "Yes", she says. "You didn't wait for your mother or your sisters or brothers?" "No", she says. "I just ran."

Dessica's mother, Marilude, looks over at her small child and nods her head in agreement. "In that moment, we were all running for ourselves." Her face is blank as she says this, but underneath, there is an abiding solemnity. Everyone in Haiti, and especially in neighbourhoods like Marilude's, know that death came to people arbitrarily--some were lucky, others were not.

Over two weeks after the earthquake, Marilude received her first quantity of food aid, a 25 kilogramme bag of rice from the United Nations World Food Programme, distributed in conjunction with WorldVision. Over the next few weeks, she will use the food to feed her six children--the youngest are five-year-old twins, and the oldest is 22. "And, actually", she says, "I'm pregnant."

The United Nations began a major scale-up of food distribution, which aims to reach two million people in two weeks through 16 distribution points in and around the capital of Haiti, Port-au-Prince. The UN and its partners faced enormous difficulties in safely and accurately implementing the food strategy, but are combating the delay by prioritizing pregnant women, as well as malnourished children and orphanages.

The food, which Marilude's family will use for weeks, gives her family a sense of security and safety for the first time since the disaster struck. When the earthquake hit, she was at home with the children, and though she was injured when rubble fell onto her hip, she feels confident that the baby will be okay. With searing honesty she admits, the baby is not her top priority.

Marilude is still trying to explain to the children that their father is dead. On 12 January, her husband was working at the Caribbean Market, a location where many people were lost, and his body has yet to be recovered. The younger children either don't understand, or won't admit he's gone.

Because their house was partially destroyed, the family is now homeless and lives in the field where Dessica first ran to escape. The once-empty lot is now a city of sheets, with hundreds of neighbours and destitute families struggling to find food and water.

When Marilude is...