P icture this: After a day of working, parenting, and/or running errands, you turn on the television or skim your phone notifications, looking for a way to relax. That’s when it catches your eye—an EF-4 tornado has torn apart a small community in the southern United States. Your eyes widen as your heartbeat slows, while ravaging images of destroyed homes and scenes of debris capture your attention.
When witnessing these tragedies and natural disasters, many of us wonder: “How does a community even begin to work through this event?” Further, God guides us, the church, to wonder: “How can we best serve alongside this hurting community to recover from this?”
At World Renew Disaster Response Services (DRS), the Reformed Church in America’s domestic disaster response partner, we want to help God’s people be Jesus’s hands and feet through disaster response ministry. After 54 years of faithful service, we’ve discovered a few best practices in restoring homes and communities after storms.
Work toward holistic, long-term recovery
We need to respond to disasters in a long-term fashion. Other world events will take our attention off the immediate needs of a community not long after a disaster occurs. It’s the reality of our news cycle. After we’ve provided emergency items and assistance, society can soon forget about this storm. But at this point, a disaster-impacted community is just getting their feet wet in recovery. It can take years to undertake long-term recovery. Long-term recovery groups (LTRGs)—that DRS partners with across North America—must raise funding, hire staff, build capacity, assess needs, find long-term volunteer housing, and more. And as survivors wait for assistance, their hope often dwindles.
At World Renew DRS, we specialize in long-term responses to disasters. While we help provide clean-up services after disasters to help remove debris, tarp roofs, and more, we know our efforts need to focus on empowering LTRGs as we prepare to rebuild a community’s resilience together. We need to focus on staying, no matter how long it takes.
Assess unmet needs
After the emergency phase of a disaster, DRS often conducts unmet needs assessments in disaster-impacted communities. When a Long-term recovery group (LTRG) is preparing to intake clients for help after a disaster, it is challenging to know the overall scope of the community’s needs. How many families need new clothing or school supplies for their children? How many households need new furniture? How many homes need repaired or new roofs?
Before sending volunteer repair teams, DRS holds a needs assessment within community walk-in centers to help LTRGs survey disaster survivors about their holistic needs. Needs assessment volunteers typically spend two weeks surveying survivors, determining their needs and helping them unpack their experience, praying with them, and more. From this assessment, accurate measurement of total financial need, total repair needs, total furniture needed, and more is provided to the LTRG. Case managers also have accurate information about the needs of their clientele.
Let the community lead
At World Renew DRS, we believe communities know their strengths and assets, even in times of trouble. We strive to empower communities to utilize their strengths and assets to address setbacks after a disaster, instead of acting as a helpful rescuer assisting a community in need. DRS always enters a disaster-impacted community following an invitation from a LTRG. And, through a community-led response, DRS aims to support long-term strategies and decisions for recovery.
Members of the community know their history, current context, and future better than us! If a LTRG makes changes to their budget, we trust their capability to manage and adjust their finances. If a LTRG decides to add additional staffing to their team, we understand they know what they need to work at full capacity. As we walk alongside disaster-impacted communities to restore hope, their belief in themselves to restore their community is vital.
Related: What a hurricane taught me about Christ’s call to new life
For World Renew DRS and RCA Global Mission, responding to disasters is so much more than the initial money donation or emergency response. While those resources are necessary, it’s our goal to show up when everyone else has left, partner with and listen to the community members, and stay until the work is done.
The next time a disaster strikes, we’re here to help you engage in disaster response in a healthy and helpful way. Whether that means donating funds or volunteering, we have opportunities for you. Learn more about how to get involved with World Renew DRS today at worldrenew.net/volunteer or connect with RCA Short-Term Mission at shortterm@rca.org.
Provide immediate relief and long-term recovery
RCA Global Mission, along with its on-the-ground partners, is responding to current hurricane relief needs. When you give to the U.S.A. Disasters Care Network, you help us respond immediately when disasters strike and also maintain a long-term response.
Lexi Fischer
Lexi Fischer is the marketing and communications coordinator for World Renew.