Story of Triumph Airing on Denver's KBDI Helps Mark 5 Years Since Haitian Earthquake

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Feb 17, 2015, 12:57 ET

NEW HAVEN, Conn., Feb. 17, 2015 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- An award-winning documentary about hope and healing in the midst of horrific tragedy will air in Denver on Saturday, Feb. 21, at 4 p.m., marking five years since Haiti's historic 2010 earthquake. The documentary will be broadcast on Denver's KBDI, a PBS station.

The documentary has previously aired on PBS affiliates from Philadelphia to Los Angeles.

The earthquake of Jan. 12, 2010 killed well over 100,000 people and left another 1.5 million homeless. As the events unfolded there were many stories of tragedy, but also of heroism and the resilient nature of the human spirit in the face of thousands of serious injuries.

"Unbreakable: A Story of Hope and Healing in Haiti" won the Most Inspirational Documentary Award at the DocMiami International Film Festival in September. It tells the story of the thousands of children who underwent emergency amputations and their involvement in "Healing Haiti's Children," a program that offered free prosthetics and rehabilitation to every child injured in the earthquake.

The program was a partnership in which the University of Miami-affiliated Project Medishare provided medical expertise and treatment while the Knights of Columbus offered funding of nearly $1.7 million. To date, more than 1,000 children have received new prosthetic limbs in the program, which has also trained Haitians to continue both the fabrication and rehabilitation work.

"This film shows that when there is the will to do so, both in terms of those providing aid and those receiving it, lives can be saved and transformed by a program that is truly sustainable," said Knights of Columbus CEO Carl Anderson, executive producer of the documentary. "The work of the dedicated medical staff and the unbreakable spirit of these Haitian young people in circumstances most of us can't imagine, are truly inspiring."

Not only did these young people survive, Anderson explained, they thrived and some recipients even formed an amputee soccer team composed of amputee athletes from Port-au-Prince and the surrounding region. The film follows the story of the new team, named Zaryen (tarantula) after the resilient spider known for becoming even more determined after losing a leg.

The squad and its players have inspired not only Haitians, but also Americans, as the team traveled to the U.S. in 2011 to introduce amputee soccer to troops who lost limbs in Iraq and Afghanistan. Three members of the team met Pope Francis during a Vatican conference last month to help mark the fifth anniversary of the earthquake and to assess the ongoing impact of the country's humanitarian catastrophe.

SOURCE Knights of Columbus