Context
As demonstrated by the recent response to the tsunami, disaster response teams deliver desperately needed relief to afflicted communities the world over. What’s more, global relief, rehabilitation and reconstruction programs save lives on a heroic scale. What is less well known, if not neglected, is the proven capacity of community-centered programs to transform disaster into something that goes way, way beyond recovery.

In India, Turkey, Honduras, Jamaica and Iran, grassroots women’s groups, galvanized by disaster, and working with their communities have

• rebuilt and/or monitored the disaster-resistant building of entire communities
• directed and/or monitored the distribution of entitlements
• designed and/or monitored systems for water, power and transportation
• coordinated health care
• restored the environment
• fed the hungry
• exposed the corrupt
• re-opened the schools
• set-up savings clubs
• diversified and enriched the local economy
• re-freshed local legislatures
• updated traditions
• put the concept of democracy into daily practice
• won over community institutions as lasting partners

How do they do it?
In developing countries particularly, women are experts in local realities. They know their neighbors and can talk to them. They share knowledge, traditions, experiences and truths. They have common needs – water, food, housing, health and family care. These driving concerns can bring them together.

In collectivity, they discover capacity and power. They discover the skills they already have and identify the ones they need to acquire, whether technical, manual, social, economic or political. They are more likely to put aside fears - and often enough, dysfunctional traditions - that may have handicapped them. Finally, they realize their vested interest in recovery; and the even larger one in sustainable development.

Growth
In the last decade, grassroots member organizations of the Huairou Commission have devised and demonstrated a portfolio of transformative community–based disaster response practices. (Follow the links on this site.) Beyond their local practices, however, they share what they know: survivor group to survivor group. Furthermore, in venues the world over, they explain the common sense and high return of fully incorporating grassroots women’s groups and local communities in the design, search for more forward looking disaster management policies and systems.

& Partners
Thankfully, those in international disaster work save lives in the moment of emergency; thankfully, they search for ways to improve disaster warning, preparedness and response systems. Based on the experiences of its grassroots member organizations in five countries, Huairou believes that the deeper their understanding goes, the more likely they will be to embrace community-led efforts. We urge them to do so.