By Donna Callejon | Director, GlobalGiving Disaster Recovery Network
Thanks to the generous support of nearly 50,000 donors like you who've raised more than $11 million to fund immediate relief and long-term recovery efforts after Hurricane Maria, we have a new story of progress to share this month, this time from All Hands and Hearts, a GlobalGiving partner that’s been active in responding to numerous natural disasters, including Hurricanes Harvey, Florence, and Michael, and the 2015 Nepal earthquakes.
Over the past five months of All Hands and Hearts' relief efforts in Puerto Rico, their team has determined that the greatest need in communities is roofing assistance. Blue tarps stand out prominently in every neighborhood they work in, and most have been up since Maria struck the island. The tarps are doing little to protect homeowners from the elements and are a constant reminder of a disaster that has so profoundly affected their lives.
There are two common types of roofs in Puerto Rico: flat, concrete roofs and pitched wooden roofs. Each poses its own set of challenges when it comes to rebuilding more resiliently ahead of future storms. But by not simply repairing roofs to their original designs and taking the extra step to make them hurricane resilient, All Hands is relieving the bottleneck in the pace of recovery and the challenges local groups and outside nonprofits face in affording the materials required to rebuild in a resilient way. Once the critical roof repairs are completed homeowners are able to move forward with the repairs inside their home and return to some semblance of life before Maria.
With support from GlobalGiving donors like you, All Hands and Hearts is also launching a house repair program in Dominica, where they'll be carrying out essential repair work for people whose homes have had no roof since September 2017, and some who were still recovering from damage from Tropical Storm Erika in 2015. As hurricane season is approaching, the vital funding you've provided will allow their team to recruit, train, and deploy teams of motivated volunteers to help repair roofs more quickly.
Thank you again for your generosity and for standing with the people of Puerto Rico and Dominica as they continue on the path to a full recovery. We look forward to sharing more stories of the progress you’ve made possible in the months to come.
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When a disaster strikes, recovery efforts led by people who live and work in affected communities are often overlooked and underfunded. GlobalGiving is changing this reality. Since 2004, we've been shifting decision-making power to crises-affected communities through trust-based grantmaking and support.
We make it easy, quick, and safe to support people on the ground who understand needs in their communities better than anyone else.
They were there long before the news cameras arrived, and they’ll be there long after the cameras leave. They know how to make their communities more resilient to future disasters, and they’re already hard at work. GlobalGiving puts donations and grants directly into their hands. Because the status quo—which gives the vast majority of funding to a few large organizations—doesn’t make sense.
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