World

Photo: The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

Actor-director Sean Penn gestures as he participates in a discussion at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge, Mass. Tuesday, Feb. 26, 2013 regarding Haiti in the wake of a devastating earthquake three years ago. Penn is the co-founder of the J/P Haitian Relief Organization. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)

Sean Penn remembers smelling dead bodies when he arrived in Haiti after the earthquake three years ago.

But now there's music in those same streets even as the country faces many years of rebuilding, the Academy Award-winning actor said Tuesday.

Penn said "extraordinary" changes have happened since the Jan. 12, 2010, natural disaster killed more than 300,000 people and left about 1.5 million homeless.

He also called the Haitian people resilient in his remarks in a forum at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.

The actor is an ambassador-at-large for Haiti's president and CEO of the aid group J/P Haitian Relief Organization, which started with a goal of bringing painkillers to earthquake victims. It became an agency that manages a camp for displaced people and works to resettle them. It also does other aid work such as clearing rubble, repairing damaged homes and running a community centre and clinics.

Former Haitian Prime Minister Michele Pierre-Louis and Ken Keen, the Army lieutenant general who commanded the U.S. military relief effort in Haiti, joined Penn as panelists to discuss the progress in Haiti since the earthquake.

Pierre-Louis spoke of the strength of the Haitian people but also of promises, including from the government, that haven't been kept.

"Today there is reason for hope, but at the same time, there is a lot to be done," she said.