MORE than 3,000 families whose lives were shattered by the devastating 2009 Haiti earthquake have been given new hope thanks to the generosity of Islanders.

This week aid workers in the Caribbean nation – the poorest country in the western hemisphere – passed on a heartfelt thank you from those families to Jersey after 12 life-changing corn grinding mills paid for by disaster relief charity Jersey Side By Side were delivered.

The delivery of the mills was the culmination of a two-year money-raising drive by the charity to fund a project which would help the reconstruction of Haiti following the massive earthquake on 12 January 2009.

On that awful day, an estimated 220,000 were killed and countless more injured. Millions were left homeless and, almost three years on, many tens of thousands are still living in makeshift camps and settlements.