St. Croix Long-Term Recovery Group

The St. Croix Long-Term Recovery Group (LTRG) is a cooperative body that is made up of representatives from faith-based, non-profit, government, business and other organizations working within St. Croix to assist individuals and families as they recover from Hurricane Maria. The goal of the LTRG is to unite recovery resources with community needs in order to ensure that even the most vulnerable in the community recover from the disaster.

Rebuilding Lives One Home at a Time!
In this reporting quarter, the St. Croix Long Term Recovery Group construction and rebuild program has surpassed $200,000 USD of GlobalGiving funds to purchase building materials for homes. To date, we have hosted 52 volunteer teams who have contributed 43,973 volunteer labor hours and completed 71 homes! With daily requests for assistance still coming in, today we have 68 homes in the queue, and requests for service continue to come in every day. And while we can report on the number of homes completed and anticipate even more, the impact on lives simply cannot be calculated.

Disaster Case Management: No Closed Cases Until Recovery is Complete!
As you know, with the loss of federal funding to hire critical Disaster Case Managers (DCM), the LTRG has been piecing together funds through grants from various philanthropic sources. Thanks to our partners from the National Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster (NVOAD) and the United Methodist Committee on Relief we have been granted an additional two DCMs. And because of the generosity of our GlobalGiving family, a territory-wide grant has been awarded, allowing us to hire two more DCMs on St. Croix! With these funds in place, the LTRG now has seven DCMs!

During the quarter, our case managers have served and continue to serve 186 cases. Of those, 135 are still active, 7 have referrals pending, 40 cases were closed, and 10 have been referred to the Unmet Needs Committee.

Unmet Needs Committee
As mentioned above, the Unmet Needs Committee fills a critical role in disaster recovery. When a DCM has exhausted all resources available and needs are still not met, then the Unmet Needs Committee steps in to fill the gap. In this reporting quarter, the Unmet Needs Committee has accepted 12 new cases through our online portal, which is unique to St. Croix and allows DCMs to anonymously upload cases for review. Thanks to a generous grant from GlobalGiving the Unmet Needs Committee is able to serve 12 cases that had previously nowhere else to turn.

Preparedness Clinics: Connecting, Engaging, and Equipping Residents
Since August of this year, the St. Croix Long Term Recovery Group has been directing significant focus on connecting, engaging and equipping our community with Disaster Preparedness Clinics. With the understanding that disasters, no matter how small, can hit our territory at any time, these 90 to 120-minute sessions have been geared towards empowering our community stakeholders with tools in preparing to be their own first responder. They also serve the purpose of increasing public awareness on the importance of personal preparation and community involvement as each member learns principles that help to strengthen their approach and resiliency.

Between August 2019 and November 2019, within the public and private sector and faith leader organizations, we have conducted seven "Learn To Become Your Own First Responder" clinics. Over 200 lives have been impacted with 119 feedback sheets received that list immediate action steps they are committed to taking in preparing their households and teams. There have also been requests for upper management trainings regarding contingency plans, team coordination, and tools necessary for staff preparedness. Some of the following testimonials serve to emphasize this strategy and redouble St. Croix Long Term Recovery Group’s commitment to providing further clinics with expanded topics:

• "The PAC principle spoke volumes to me in taking this training seriously."
• "You made me feel cared for and I can prepare even with a small budget. I hope you come back again to do more trainings. Do you speak within schools too? We need this valuable information to get to our youth."
• “More people need this information and presentation. You spoke with passion, engaged the audience, cared about the people and used very practical examples.”  
• "How can you take this information to our high schools and group trainings for our young people?”  

Simply put and as John C. Maxwell so aptly said: "We cannot become what we need by remaining what we are." In testimony to the truth of this statement, as we move into 2020, our commitment is to expand our approach within our programming to accommodate the numerous requests for continued trainings, larger groups, and preparation as we also grow our Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster. Areas of focus are, but not limited to: 

• Provide support follow-up sessions with organizations previously served
• Expand our clinics by offering document preparation/security opportunities and other engagement builders
• Partner with other community leaders that address key concerns (Ex. stress, wound care, certifications)
• Create Youth Ambassadors that can assist in their peer groups and neighborhoods in the event of disasters
• Increase our presence in the schools and at community functions with a consistent message of awareness
• Train, coach, and support our management teams as they prepare their organizational plans

This powerful work is critical to the St. Croix Long Term Recovery Group’s mission to serve vulnerable neighborhoods and to not leave a single man, woman, or child behind.  As such and with the need and value of the clinics tested, St. Croix Long Term Recovery Group is currently working to identify $150,000 to assist us in expanding this essential work in our community.

Making A Difference…
The St. Croix Long Term Recovery Group is an organization committed to making a memorable difference in the lives of our community stakeholders, one life, one business, one mind at a time. While emergency relief and even intermediate recovery and survival absorb resources for the first one to two years, we believe that our community is now in a stage where it is truly able to build independence and resilience for the future. As such, the time is now to engage our communities like never before and we thank you for standing shoulder to shoulder with us now and into the future!