On October 2012, our City experienced Superstorm Sandy, a hurricane that devastated many communities in our City and surrounding areas. Nonprofits stood up and played a significant role in the immediate aftermath and continue to help families with their recovery today.
HSC has been working hard to understand and highlight the role and perspective of nonprofits. We released a report “Far From Home: Nonprofits Assess Sandy Recovery and Disaster Preparedness” with Baruch College’s School of Public Affairs at our Sandy: One Year Later: Assessing Community Recovery and Anticipating Another Disaster forum. Please read HSC’s blog post for more information and photos from the HSC forum.
The report offers the results of a new survey of more than 100 nonprofit human services organizations and provides insights into the role of human services organizations in Sandy relief and recovery, the impact of the services they have provided, the extent of unmet community needs, the quality of relief coordination by city, state, and federal government, and strategies to accelerate recovery. It reveals the ongoing housing and financial challenges as well as a clear need for improved disaster coordination going forward.
During her Keynote address at the Forum, Former Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services, Linda Gibbs, offered nine key points about disaster response and preparedness which can be found here.
HSC has developed recommendations based on the report and forum that will be used to inform the City Administration as well as State leaders. In addition, HSC will continue to advocate and monitor unmet needs related to Sandy.
We would like to the funders who made this event and report possible: Altman Foundation, Center for Disaster Philanthropy, Mayor’s Fund to Advance NYC, and UJA Federation of NY.
