The devastation of Hurricane Maria revealed the longstanding and historical traumas faced by many Puerto Rican communities. Now the pandemic and its complex web of impacts have further built upon and exacerbated these traumas. A critical question has emerged: What does a just recovery mean for Puerto Rico?
Your donation to the Puerto Rico & Caribbean Hurricane Relief Fund has ensured that our incredible nonprofit partners across Puerto Rico are able to help answer this question through their critical work in service of communities across the island every single day.
Here’s a brief look at how your donation has helped one of our key partners, Mentes Puertorriqueñas en Acción (MPA), contribute its own unique answer to this important question.
For the past 10 years, MPA has been at the forefront of inspiring the next generation of citizen leaders to transform Puerto Rico. The MPA team works directly with college students and young professionals to provide them with the skills and connections they need to advance social causes that build a fair, just, and participatory society.
MPA’s flagship program is called the Program for the Empowerment and Retention of Agents of Change (PARACa). Through PARACa, their team provides intensive training every year to a cohort of about 20 youth leaders and places these new leaders in internships with community-based organizations driving social change across Puerto Rico.
After Hurricane Maria, MPA adapted the program to have the youth leaders focus on relief and recovery efforts. This contributed to the long-term resilience of impacted communities and tackled systemic issues that amplified the outsized impacts of the hurricane.
The pandemic caused MPA to make significant changes to the structure of the program, but the organization maintained its core promise of preparing more than 20 young Puerto Rican leaders (even though Zoom!) to excel in the social impact sector. Thanks to your support, GlobalGiving was able to invest in the success of MPA’s 2020 PARACa program and, by extension, in the next generation of citizen leaders in Puerto Rico. Your donation helped shape the answer of what a just recovery looks like in practice: providing the opportunity for Puerto Rican youth to chart a course for their own self-defined, locally-relevant recovery.
Imagining and achieving a just recovery for Puerto Rico will continue to require many unique approaches, voices, and perspectives. Thank you for joining with GlobalGiving and MPA to continue pushing towards that just recovery.
As we’ve done over the last three years, GlobalGiving will continue to keep you updated in the months ahead about how your generosity and support have powered community-led disaster recovery in Puerto Rico.
Be safe and well.
With gratitude,
Chase + the GlobalGiving Team
It’s hard to believe that three years have already passed since Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico and other parts of the Caribbean. In Puerto Rico, the trauma and damage inflicted by the storm remain present to this day.
We must remember that Hurricane Maria was the deadliest disaster in the United States in 100 years. It tragically left at least 3,000 people dead and the entire island without full power for nearly an entire year. The storm’s impacts not only built upon years of economic and political marginalization of the Puerto Rican people, but it also weakened local communities’ ability to respond to other massive crises thrown their way this year—like the earthquakes that struck the island earlier this year and the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
The reality is that the nonprofit sector in Puerto Rico and its leaders like Ana Yris Guzmán have been, and continue to be, at the forefront of recovery efforts on the island. Both federal and local government agencies have sadly failed to deliver on promised disaster aid.
In the immediate aftermath of the storm and the years that followed, you chose to join with more than 50,000 others to support GlobalGiving’s Puerto Rico & Caribbean Hurricane Relief Fund. As a result of your donation, our trusted nonprofit partners based in Puerto Rico have been able to rely on GlobalGiving’s long-term support to further their critical work. Here is a snapshot of how your donation continues to help communities across Puerto Rico on their journey to recovery:
Thank you for your generosity and support of community-led disaster recovery. Please expect another update from GlobalGiving early next year about how your donation makes a difference in the lives of so many.
With gratitude,
Chase + the GlobalGiving Team
In the face of so many overwhelming challenges—from COVID-19 to recent earthquakes—communities across Puerto Rico continue to show extraordinary courage and determination. Now, on top of these challenges, the impacts of Hurricane Isaias as it passed Puerto Rico in recent days serve as a stark reminder of the precarious position of the island as we continue into this year’s hurricane season. Each additional disaster event further complicates the already daunting journey to recovery that communities continue to face long after Hurricane Maria struck nearly three years ago.
Thanks to your support of our Puerto Rico & Caribbean Hurricane Relief Fund, GlobalGiving has recently activated additional emergency donations in support of our trusted nonprofit partners on the frontlines. Now more than ever, our partners are providing critical services to community members most in need, combating misinformation, and standing in solidarity with those who have lost their homes, livelihoods, and/or family members during this devastating time.
Here is a brief snapshot of how your generosity is making a difference right now in communities across Puerto Rico during this time of crisis:
Thank you for choosing to support community-led disaster recovery efforts. We will have more updates to share about the impacts of your generosity in the coming months.
Please stay safe and well.
With gratitude,
Chase + the GlobalGiving team
GlobalGiving is working around the clock during the ongoing COVID-19 crisis to best serve all of our nonprofit partners across 170 countries. We have launched a Coronavirus Relief Fund, piloted a Hardship Microgrant Initiative, and doubled down on trusting our partners to know what is best for their communities during this emergency.
The COVID-19 crisis is not only upending our own lives and the lives of our loved ones, but it is also disproportionately hurting the most vulnerable among us and in communities around the world. This reality is especially true for communities that have already been severely affected by recent disasters, like Hurricane Maria, and now find themselves on an even more complex and daunting journey to recovery.
We stand in solidarity with all of our nonprofit partners in Puerto Rico that are now grappling with the devastating impacts of COVID-19 on top of the traumas of Hurricane Maria and the recent earthquakes that struck the island in January. Before the massive spread of the coronavirus, myself and other members of GlobalGiving’s Disaster Recovery Network team were fortunate to visit many of our partners on the island in February. I want to take a moment to briefly share some of the incredible work that you and more than 50,000 others have supported through your donation to the Puerto Rico & Caribbean Hurricane Relief Fund.
We will be back in your inbox in the coming months with more stories of hope and recovery in the midst of so many challenges. From our nonprofit partners and everyone at GlobalGiving, thank you for your incredible generosity. Your choice to support community-led recovery efforts in the Caribbean makes all the difference during this difficult time.
Please stay safe and well—and let’s all look out for each other and our communities.
With gratitude,
Chase + the GlobalGiving team
Recently, two GlobalGiving team members visited our nonprofit partners in Puerto Rico to better understand how communities are recovering after Hurricane Maria. They met with community leaders to listen to stories of progress and heartache, and to jointly design new ways to support locally-led recovery and resilience efforts in 2020.
On Jan. 7, 2020, a 6.4 earthquake followed by hundreds of tremors caused significant damage to the island’s southwest region. With hearts heavy with worry for those we had just visited, GlobalGiving immediately contacted our partners to assess the latest relief needs. To support the earthquake relief efforts of the communities still grappling with the effects of Hurricane Maria, visit our Puerto Rico Earthquake Relief Page.
Here are three takeaways from our team’s recent visit to Puerto Rico:
Hurricanes amplify structural issues in Puerto Rico.
The destruction of Hurricane Maria exacerbated long-standing issues facing Puerto Rico, such as its debt crisis, out-migration, and aging energy infrastructure. People living in already precarious conditions were left even more vulnerable by the devastation the hurricane inflicted on the island. Local nonprofit partner G-8 has used recovery funds from GlobalGiving to support housing recovery and relocation in Caño Martín Peña communities, as well as to support a number of repair programs and advocacy campaigns focused on resilience to future disasters.
Civil society is the backbone of recovery.
The 2017 disaster caused more than $100 billion in damages, while federal aid distributed thus far to the island (approximately $14 billion of $41 billion currently allocated) has been well below what is needed for society to fully rebuild. Just this month the federal government announced it will finally begin the process to release housing funds for rebuilding. To fill this gap, local and international nonprofit organizations have been spearheading the recovery process. Local nonprofits, such as Taller Salud, engage in case management and advocacy efforts to ensure that all community members have a voice in an equitable recovery.
The generosity of GlobalGiving donors continues to sustain long-term recovery.
GlobalGiving made nearly $2 million in grants in 2019 alone to our trusted nonprofit partners based in Puerto Rico, with the support of individuals like you, to bolster the economic, social, and environmental recovery of communities across Puerto Rico. One recent grant is supporting the Puerto Rico Community Foundation to organize rural community leaders into a network focused on ensuring the sustainable use of 52 community aqueducts across the island. Over the long term, this work will contribute to safe and reliable access to drinking water in many communities that were heavily impacted by the hurricane. We will be sharing the progress of this grant and other initiatives in the coming months.
Members of our team will be returning to Puerto Rico in February, where we will be connecting with more of our trusted partners that continue to be at the forefront of Hurricane Maria recovery. From all of us at GlobalGiving, thank you for your inspiring generosity and support.
With gratitude,
Andrea + the GlobalGiving Team
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