Rebuilding a Safe Haven for Future Crises

It has now been exactly one year since the devastation of Hurricanes Maria and Irma. Thanks to our supporters, Intercambios was able to quickly rebuild and be more prepared for future storms. We have been able to repair the damage to our office and resume our lifesaving services. Our clients have been able to attain greater stability, as they are no longer faced with ongoing power outages and lack of access to communications. The support from our generous donors and foundation partners made it possible to purchase a generator, cistern and water filter. These items will greatly help our clients stay safe in the event of future storms!

Although we have recovered from the immediate damage wrought by the hurricanes, we now look to the future to achieve full disaster preparedness. In the coming months, Intercambios will seek to create an emergency supply of essential items such as batteries, a convertor, and a power generator. In addition, we are raising resources to conduct an organizational needs assessment and establish written policies and procedures to implement in future storms, which will ensure a systematic and highly coordinated response that will save the lives of our constituents. We are also seeking support to purchase client survival kits, which would be equipped with canned food, bottled water, detergent, hygiene items and LED lamps.

Last but not least, we are excited to report that we are in the process of ramping up our clinical operations to address any barriers to treatment our clients face. Intercambios is deeply grateful for our individual and foundation donors, whose support in these difficult times has allowed us to rebuild to be stronger than ever!

In Puerto Rico "rebuilding" is still counted by how any families have access to electric power and potable water... and it's been more than 8 months.  Yet, the untold story is the very real trauma of not only having survived two major hurricanes in the month of September 2017, but the lack of support to many sectors by both the local and the US Federal Government.  It has been the non-governmental sector that has kept the most vulnerable alive and in relative health.  Here at Intercambios we have not stop working to make sure our mission continues to be fulfilled: to promote the social integration of marginalized groups, including drug users, homeless, and sex workers by working from a scientific harm reduction perspective through service provision, education, advocacy, and research.  It has been a real challenge to continue forth while the health sector is being disregarded and the death toll of more and more people on the island continues to rise, and especially the lives and health of those who are chronically marginalized in our society.  The "rebuilding" or "reconstruction" of Puerto Rico that you hear in the news, certainly does not include “them”. Yet, our determination has bear fruit in this tumultuous landscape and we are now more ready than last year for this hurricane season which has already begun (June 1st marks the official beginning...) and we are now able to open our door with an additional service, as a safe haven for homeless individuals, if/when a hurricane comes close.  Armed with a power generator, water filter, inflatable beds, and reinforced doors in our Fajardo offices we feel apprehensive about the closeness of September 2018 (as that is the year anniversary of Hurricane Irma and Maria), yet we know that our participants have more and better services than last year, as we are now embarking in a new journey to make our organization even more focused on outreach and health services.  Specifically, we are adding a nurse and a case manager to our staff to come closer to a multidisciplinary outreach team that provides harm reduction services (physically and emotionally) where our "participants are at".  All of this as we pay particular attention to the need to address the trauma of surviving and resisting here in Puerto Rico.