By Rachel Roa | GlobalGiving Staff
It’s been nearly eight months since Hurricane Irma left a trail of destruction across the Caribbean, and while first responders from larger NGOs have mostly departed affected areas, the focus of the community-led organizations that remain at work has shifted to long-term recovery. Your generous donation to our Hurricane Irma Relief Fund continues to support those locally driven organizations that understand their community’s needs and are able to effectively lead ongoing recovery efforts.
In this update, I’d like to report on the work of four organizations that your donation has helped fund over the last several months across the Caribbean.
After the St. Croix Montessori School suffered significant damage from Hurricanes Maria and Irma, the St. Croix Foundation for Community Development set to work coordinating building repairs and an expansion of the school’s programs to serve an influx of students from across the Virgin Islands. With support from GlobalGiving donors, they’ve been able to repair and reopen the school, run educational workshops for parents, and organize 100 volunteers to build a new playground from recycled downed trees, telephone poles, and tires to provide a beautiful, inspiring place for children in St. Croix to play for years to come.
Fishing for Families in Need partnered with local leaders on the island of St. John in the Virgin Islands to assess the community’s recovery needs and supported repairs to the Gifft Hill School and funded direct micro-grants to affected families.
When natural disasters like Hurricane Irma hit, hygiene and sanitation supplies play a vital role in stopping the spread of disease. Jake’s Diapers has worked with partners in Haiti to deliver more than 4,900 cloth diapers to maternal health clinics, 3,900 disposable diapers for use in neonatal intensive care units, and more than 1,200 adult hygiene supplies to stock a cholera treatment center.
Team Rubicon Global’s volunteer network of military veterans deployed to seven Caribbean islands in the immediate aftermath of Hurricanes Irma and Maria—some teams arrived as soon as 48 hours after landfall—and delivered emergency supplies and aid to more than 24,000 survivors. In recent months, their teams have returned to the islands to train and equip community volunteers to develop community-level disaster response plans and improve the resilience and sustainability of local infrastructure ahead of future storms.
Thank you again for your generous support of these and more than a dozen other vetted GlobalGiving partners committed to a full, community-led recovery across the Caribbean after Hurricane Irma. Watch for more stories of progress in your inbox in the coming months!
Warmly,
Rachel + the GlobalGiving Team
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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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