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.

FE MA disaster recovery framework of 2011 gives a useful insight into the social sector level of resilience as a complete system. It highlights preparedness as the key to continued resilience and survival of a disaster while intact and stronger.

Philanthropy as a sector has to prepare itself better for rapidly changing environment. This environment sees crucial basic infrastructures under siege such as opportunity, law and accountability. This kind of environment measures recovery not in election cycles or in months but in years.

The diverse and important functions played by donor foundations have been well documented. This documentation has a wide spectrum covering resilience, relief and recovery. We have many literature covering philanthropy and disaster providing how to guidance and instructions or who provided which funds for what. Analysis of this kind is published after years. Their findings are critical for insights into disaster funding organizations and their response regimens.

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.




About the Author:



0 comments:

Post a Comment

Share

Twitter Delicious Facebook Digg Stumbleupon Favorites More