Saturday, May 16, 2015

Redefining Disasters Preparedness And Resilience Within The Philanthropic Sector

By Tammie Caldwell


One billion dollars is relatively large sum of money. This represent sum of money in damages that the United States Government uses as a benchmark to measure the relative impact of a natural disaster. Such billion dollar disaster occurrences continue to increase with newer threats arising faster than the facilities of disasters preparedness available. These range from western states wildfires to raging Texas tornadoes.

We know that the most adversely affected people are those already facing vulnerabilities and various risks before disasters strikes. We know that relieve from such risks is distributed according to social forces. These forces essentially determine allocation of resources. The forces have power to provide money for safe homes or location of levees. In essence, calamities are most painful where philanthropy is most active.

Philanthropic advanced activities like leverage, collective capacity and coalition building must kick in immediately disaster strikes. Experience and research has shown, however, that donations from the private sector including from foundations declines dramatically in six months. Donations are also quite poorly coordinated.

Dramatic insights into our social sectors level of resilience and functions as a system are provided by FE MA through a 2011 disaster recovery framework. This framework tells us preparedness is the key to sustainable, stronger and intact survival or resilience after a calamity.

The philanthropy sector needs to better prepare itself for a swiftly changing operating scenario. This scenario has basic infrastructures of accountability, law and opportunity under siege. Such a scenario measures recovery in years and not in months or cycles of elections.

The important and diverse roles that donor foundations provide have avid documentation. The spectrum of documentation covers calamity recovery, relief and resilience. There are numerous theories on disaster and philanthropy that provide how, to instructions and guidance or from whom funds came from and went where. This kind of analysis often appears in publications years after. The findings prove critical in the provision of insights for calamity financiers and their responses.

The experiences of calamity inflicted communities dramatically show what improved data infrastructure and a shared sense of urgency could accomplish. A donor organization that leverages its data effectively plays a significant role in placing valuable resources and bringing positive outcomes to an afflicted community. An example is the Foundation Maps, an online grant tool from The Foundation Center. It gives organizations which are not after profit and financiers a unique framework to map, define and share critical data in real time.

Whether the occurrence is an outbreak of Ebola in West Africa or bankrupt Detroit, disaster communities constitute the proverbial canaries in the coalmine. They expose an underlying status of the society infrastructure as well as how they affect people. When a catastrophe strikes, everyone sees himself or herself as a people. Everyone sees his or her fragility and vulnerability. For a moment in time, it becomes us and not them.

As the environment, scale and rate of recurrence of disasters rises, patronage must swing focus into awareness. It can commence doing this with a shared urgency sense while making a commitment to improve infrastructures of data. That way, first responders have a better opportunity to spring into action faster. It will enable them help communities in self organization long before the rest of the world can mobilize.




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