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Summary: Response To Hurricane Katrina

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Disasters are events that not in control - situations which exceed public sector capacities, push societal linkages to a breaking point, and demand extraordinary and selfless behavior from citizens, businesses, communities, and non-governmental organizations. Disasters arguably have their most sorrowful impact at the level of the individual, where crises of natural and technical variety undermine the comfort and stability people feel and leave them hurt, and looking for direction and meaning in institutions and beliefs larger than themselves. Even when local government officials act heroically, individuals still look to other segments of the public sector, such as non-profit groups or religious organizations, for desperately needed support. …show more content…

A great deal of subsequent research has focused on the event and the public sector׳s handling of its aftermath. This possibly undermines our efforts to increase understanding and application of principles of collaboration in smaller communities, or in the case of New Orleans, even sub-communities within the larger metropolitan area where vulnerability and outcomes varied widely. In Katrina, “the public saw a community of private sector, nonprofit, religious, and local government actors…stepping up to respond to the need of Katrina victims…but soon realized the complexities of coordinating such an effort” in this work and elsewhere, collaborative efforts have come to the fore as salient. In Katrina׳s aftermath, a wide variety of actors played important roles, but the skills and expertise of nonprofits and faith-based groups were evidenced in ways “flexible and adaptive”; faith leaders in the New Orleans area continued to meet for many years after the event as recovery progressed. Even international nongovernmental organizations were determined to play a role in response: these international partners …show more content…

Still, the Minot case offers an example where trauma was confronted with hope. It is quite possible that this flowering of the human spirit is not so rare – that it regularly reveals itself in the activities of faith-based and nonprofit groups, but does so most effectively when understood and encouraged by a forward-thinking government, with the cooperation of community-based nonprofits and faith-based groups committed to serving the public

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