Disaster Justice
The goal of the Disaster Survival School is just disaster justice. The fundamental strategy is to utilize disaster community organizing to empower disaster-impacted residents in organizing, leading, and owning their disaster response in partnership with public and private agencies and offices. The stated outcome of the School is restructuring the entire disaster response system so that disaster-impacted residents are empowered and become the designers and directors of every step and stage of the disaster response system. Our most impacted hurricane disaster communities will never fully recover and become resilient until they lead disaster response efforts in collaboration with governmental and private agencies and offices.
Disaster Survival and Resiliency School projects include:
(1) Monthly Community Meetings - an average of 20-40 members participate in each meeting. Its organizing focus is in the South and West Lumberton area of the county - the hardest hit areas from Hurricanes Matthew in 2016 and Florence in 2018. These two BIPOC communities are 90% people of color, primarily Black and Indigenous. The school focuses on creating systems change and improvements in all four phases of disaster response: preparedness, relief, recovery, and resiliency.
(2) The Homeowner Disaster Recovery Project, which documents every homeowner in hurricane disaster areas and where they are in the disaster recovery process. The project involves street leaders and formal researchers who use tax records and GIS (Geographic Information System) data to document recovery and resiliency indicators. Without a comprehensive assessment of every homeowner in a community, no public or private agency can measure, evaluate, and compare where a community or community is, as a whole, in the disaster recovery process.
(3) Disaster Survival Tours are held in South and West Lumberton. The hour-long tours include visiting various sites and streets in the two census tracts, including stories of Hurricane Matthew and Florence and discussions of challenges and solutions related to disaster recovery and resiliency. The tour also includes state and federal policy recommendations that support community empowerment and engagement in the recovery process and local and state plans and efforts to mitigate the flooding in West and South Lumberton.
(4) The Access to Health Care in Disaster Project documents the problems and recommended solutions for disaster-impacted residents to local, state, and federal officials regarding changes throughout the disaster system to improve quality healthcare access during and following disasters.
Robeson County Disaster Survival and Resiliency School.pptxRobeson County Disaster Survival and Resiliency School - 2.pdf