It’s been nearly a year since a strong earthquake shattered Haiti.

It was on 12 January, 2010, that a catastrophic magnitude 7.0 earthquake hit the Caribbean country, killing 230,000 people, injuring a further 300,000 and making another one million homeless.

Since then, life in Haiti has changed. Apart from the devastation that the earthquake brought about, one must add the diseases that have flourished, killing more and more people.

The kidnapping of orphans has also been reported, as criminal organizations took the opportunity of so much confusion to take away infants and toddlers from their home country and sell them to the highest bidder.

It will take years before Haiti could be restored to its pre-earthquake state. Before that fateful day, Haiti was already struggling, and poverty was a dominant force. Since the earthquake, the situation has rapidly deteriorated.

The world’s response to the catastrophe was enormous, and even tiny Malta played its part.

It was also heartening to see so many personalities take a deep interest in the plight of these people. Only recently, an interview with former Miss Italia Martina Colombari, a most popular model in Italy, showed her wearing jeans and a T-shirt and doing what mothers normally do with several Haitian boys and girls.

Far away from the glamour of her normal life, Martina Colombari has spent days doing her utmost to bring a smile on the faces of these young children. Most of all, she allowed herself to be filmed without make-up and with her hair undone as she played and shared her experiences with these kids.

Sometimes, so little does so much.

And now, almost one year since the earthquake took place, the world must continue to show its solidarity with Haiti, as it should with other countries and peoples who have been hit by natural disasters.