In mid-January, a 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck Haiti, devastating parts of the country. More than 200,000 people died, 2 million have been left homeless and "a generation of amputees" has been created as a result of the quake.

Not only did the disaster take untold lives, but the task of rebuilding the impoverished nation is also expected to be an arduous one.

Anne Kiremidjian, a professor of civil and environmental engineering in Stanford University's School of Engineering, wrote at CNN.com that it could take a decade to rebuild Haiti. The acting head of the United Nations mission in Haiti, Edmond Mulet, told the BBC that reconstruction will take several decades. The United Nations estimates that 75 percent of the capital, Port-au-Prince, will have to be rebuilt. Experts warn that the international effort to rebuild Port-au-Prince will be the biggest engineering project in the Caribbean for the next 10 years.

Reconstruction in the area is beset with problems and uncertainties. A study by the Organization of American States concluded in December that many of the buildings in Haiti were so shoddily constructed that they were unlikely to survive any disaster, let alone an earthquake as severe as the one last month. The report detailed a litany of flaws in housing: weak or missing reinforcement, structures on steep slopes with unstable foundations, inadequate or nonexistent inspections, poor designs, materials and techniques. Most buildings in Haiti go up without engineers, standards or scheduled maintenance.

Simply put, Haiti needs a lot of help right now, much of it financial and logistical. Many people in the United States and all over the world have given generously to Haitian earthquake victims. They've donated to the relief effort and some have even gone to the ailing country to provide help in person.

If you're a hands-on person and want to find out how you might be able to help, visit Engineers Without Borders USA (EWB-USA). While the EWB-USA does not work in the field of disaster relief, the organization is soliciting French-speaking civil or structural engineers and other skilled technical assistance to meet immediate needs for emergency infrastructure work.

If you're a designer, you can get creative.

Designers can help through "immediate and participatory work within the architecture and design community," according to SpontaneousArchitecture.net, whose goal is to provide an immediate outlet for design thinking to engage with current events.

The online project holds a series of 12 monthly competitions to last throughout 2010. This month, SpontaneousArchitecture.net is holding a design competition aimed at getting some of Port-au-Prince's destroyed institutions up and running again:

...People talk about emergency shelter. What about emergency institutions, only one of which is housing? Participants in February's Spontaneous Architecture competition are invited to take this question seriously, enacting a response onto the site included below. The site includes multiple institutions and social, economic, and governmental infrastructures as well as residential areas and open space parks currently being used as campsites for those in need of housing. Participants are asked to consider one or all of the institutions present and can operate on the entire site or a specific portion thereof. Responses can be strategic, organizational, institutional and/or architectural.

Credit: SpontaneousArchitecture.net

Submissions should be single images, and the entry fee is $5 per entry. The winner of this month's competition will receive 50 percent of the entry fees collected from the month's submissions. The remaining portion of the entry fees will be donated to the Haitian relief effort. All submissions are due by Feb. 15, 2010. (Complete rules and details found here.)

"The empathy that provides designers with their intuitive and creative advantage can...ignite a compelling need to help others, such as when we witness the kind of devastation and suffering that nature has unleashed on the people of Haiti," Richard Grefé, the executive director of AIGA, the professional association for design, wrote last month. "Many designers are driven by the contribution their special gifts can make to improving the human condition."

It is often hoped that capitalizing on the wisdom of the masses will stimulate advances that benefit a larger good. In this case, the larger good is breathing new life into an entire nation.