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June 5, 2008, 04:34 PM ET
Protecting Against Natural Disasters
The federal government needs to create a high-level committee to make sure small, community-based charities can get the information and resources they need to provide disaster relief, Tony Pipa, of Harvard University’s Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations, “ writes on his blog.
That’s one of the recommendations of a new report by the Aspen Institute, Mobilizing Change: 10 Nonprofit Policy Proposals to Strengthen U.S. Communities.
Mr. Pipa, who helped to edit the report, says the proposal stemmed from the experiences of charities such as Mercy Corps and International Rescue Committee after Hurricane Katrina.
Many of those groups, which were responding to a domestic emergency for the first time, were surprised to learn that no agency was playing the role that the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs undertakes after overseas disasters.
(See The Chronicle’s article on the role of grass-roots charities in Hurricane Katrina relief).
Mr. Pipa says policy makers and charity leaders in the United States could learn a lot from how organizations overseas respond to natural disasters.
“What can the U.S. learn about disaster preparedness from Bangladesh, which in 2007 experienced a cyclone as strong and as damaging as a 1991 storm that killed 138,000 people – but in 2007 had fewer than 10,000 deaths?” he asks. “Still tragic, yes, but a vast improvement in safety and response.”
What do you think of the advice? What more should American groups be doing to prepare for disasters? What else can Americans learn from international disasters?
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