Coming to Haiti "for business" may seem like a contradiction in terms to anyone familiar with the headlines on this impoverished nation. Nevertheless,...

We went to Haiti as a family so that our boys do service with the Worldwide Orphans Foundation (WWO) programs. The day of the big WWO soccer tournament was filled with excitement and ceremony, but there were quieter moments, too.

In post-earthquake Haiti, the women weren't lined up waiting for food. They sat on wooden benches inside a large tent and waited patiently to have their children vaccinated.

Everyone was astonished by the condition of both buildings from the earthquake ... and the tent camps that still remain in the main square.

Haiti is not just "rebuilding" with cement and muscle. Haiti is "reimagining" a nation, with a bold vision and collective dream.

Planned communities seem to be the panacea for Haiti's housing shortage, but developing a successful planned community is tricky.

The past 18 months have illustrated our fragility to large-scale natural disasters at both extremes of the economic spectrum.

I returned to Haiti and was astonished by the progress that I saw. There remains a monumental amount of work to do but it is important to understand that the contrast between now and three months after the earthquake is night and day.

The unique cornerstone of Nouvelle Vie Haiti is to shift the mindset of an entire generation. Wilner and the rest of his team are doing just that.

When you dash in and out of people's lives, whatever assistance you offer is always limited, and sometimes entirely hamstrung, by the complexity of a new and separate reality. If I am grasping nothing else, it's that Haiti's reality is very complex.

After all the devastation wrought upon Haiti over the last year (decades, really), a country that was once the "Pearl of the Caribbean" stands at a crossroads of opportunity.

Despite the frustrations of the relief process and the ravages of cholera, there is reason to find hope in Haiti. And that reason is its people.

A year later, the catastrophe continues -- not the acute, horrific, world stopping horror, but the slow, embedded and smoldering chronic illness of a nation made dysfunctional by the world's mistakes and crimes.

In the midst of utter disappointment and abandonment there are many nonprofits still working to slowly rebuild Haiti.

For Roodlyne Pierre, the disaster felt like the end of the world and, like many Haitians, she remains psychologically affected by it.

It's been nearly a year since the earthquake that struck Haiti and many people are wondering: What's going on? A cholera outbreak and hurricane near misses haven't eased tensions.