The scenes of the destruction in Haiti last week had an impact on everyone they reached.

Mary's Meals has been operating in the country for more than four years, and we were feeding 12,000 children before the earthquake struck. The news was an unimaginable blow to a growing programme where we had been beginning to have a positive effect.

In the hours after the disaster, our desire to take urgent action to help was coupled with concern for the safety of our friends, who were then unaccounted for, and for the children, particularly those at our schools in Cite Soleil, a slum in Port au Prince.

We now know that Father Tom Hagan and Doug Campbell, our partners who worked in Port au Prince, are safe and were evacuated to the United States.

Mary's Meals has already started to provide food, water and medical supplies to earthquake victims in Hinche, a city 130km from Port au Prince to which many of the injured and their families have travelled in search of food and treatment. We anticipate that these supplies will run out soon and are making plans to bring in further aid.

Father Jacques Volcius, Mary's Meals partner there described the situation in an e-mail. The local hospitals in the central plateau have reached maximum capacity with patients from Port-au-Prince, he wrote. These victims are from all over the country and their surviving family members have travelled with them. Many have lost everything and have travelled only with the clothes on their back. People from Port-au-Prince are coming to purchase food in Hinche now because resources in the capital are almost finished.

In Port au Prince, Doug Campbell's home was destroyed in the blast from the earthquake. He told us what happened:

The earthquake struck while Father Tom and I were finishing a meeting in our office. The force of the quake violently knocked us to the floor and we crawled under a sturdy me