All Hands and Hearts deployed volunteers to support local relief efforts in Porto Alegre, the state capital of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, immediately following the underreported flooding in April-May, that affected millions across the region and drastically altered the lives and livelihoods of the most vulnerable. We will continue to provide critical scopes of work in Porto Alegre, supporting the most essential, high priority needs identified by the community's own locally-driven response.
Intense, sustained rainfall at the end of the 2024 El Nino weather phenomenon created unprecedented flooding that impacted 90% of the state's municipalities, with hundreds of thousands displaced, entire neighborhoods buried in contaminated mud, destroyed or damaged tens of thousands of homes and caused massive destruction to roads, bridges and infrastructure. Local organizations still require many extra hands to maintain their capacity to meet the community's most critical needs.
Our trained volunteer labor force will continue to assist local partners with the huge need for essential services providing kitchens with help preparing and distributing meals, supporting staffing at goods distribution centers and carrying out debris removal, item salvaging, mucking and gutting, and sanitation of affected homes, providing families with a safe and mold-free environment to return to. Adapting our highest impact scopes to match evolving needs continues to be a priority.
Our immediate impact is to focus on cleaning homes at a rate of 2-3 per week, easing individual hunger burdens on a daily basis, especially for children, and providing small comforts like new-built beds for recipients who are sleeping on floors. We believe that we are having an impact on the long-term outcomes as these critical scopes of work correlate to better physical, mental, and emotional health and make for a smoother, faster transition to recovery.
