The Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country hosted a convening meeting Monday at Arcadia Live to update, educate, unite and provide guidance for Rebuild Kerr flood recovery team members.
The meeting brought enlightenment toward expectations, encouragement for the tough road ahead and a collective “exhale” from those in the trenches assisting victims of the catastrophic July 4 flood with housing, immediate needs, mental health and more.
Angela Blanchard, a disaster recovery expert who has responded to major disasters around the world for decades, provided a roadmap for case managers navigating flood victims through recovery, CFTHC grantees facilitating direct response, community leaders managing the governmental chaos and mental health workers working toward healing.
Blanchard clearly stated no one is coming to help because the help needed is already here.
“The leaders we need for the rebuilding of Kerr County and the Hill Country are already here. You’re already here,” Blanchard said.
Blanchard walked attendees through distinct stages of disaster recovery, each with its own challenges and lessons.
The first stage, survival and sanctuary, focuses on emergency response, Blanchard said.
“We called them neighbors or we called them guests,” Blanchard said of storm victims, emphasizing the importance of treating people with dignity and never forgetting their humanity.
The chaos stage follows immediately after, bringing enormous conflict as expectations collide with reality, Blanchard said.
“Volunteers pour in all at once rather than spreading out over the months they’re needed,” Blanchard said. “People outside the affected area tell stories and make judgments about the response. Reality is on the ground, always … not in the headlines. You have to make the headlines that you want to have read, and you share them amongst yourselves.”
During this stage, Blanchard urged attendees to “allow everything that is not destructive” — including art, music, dance and other creative expressions that remind people of their identity when words fail.
The limbo stage brings mental and spiritual exhaustion as survivors reconcile with their new reality, Blanchard said.
“It’s exhaustion because finally it’s landed. I’m not in my old world and nothing I’ve tried to get myself back there has worked,” Blanchard explained.
Blanchard cautioned helpers against pushing urgency during this phase.
“Urgency is just your desire for everyone to stop feeling all this pain,” Blanchard said. “That’s just a cover for trying to get away from these bad feelings as quickly as possible.”
The reckoning stage requires communities to understand their strengths and build scaffolding to hold the weight of long-term recovery work, Blanchard said.
“This is where a strength-based approach becomes essential,” Blanchard said. “Do what you can with what you have, where you are right now.”
Blanchard emphasized that recovery requires a three-legged stool of public, private and philanthropic sectors working together, with each doing what it does best.
Throughout her presentation, Blanchard addressed the fork in the road that communities face — choosing between resignation and moving forward.
“You can go through this entire process as if you’re sitting on a stool at the hard times and misery saloon and talk about how hard it is,” she said. “That’s resignation.”
Instead, she urged solidarity with others who have faced similar disasters and the practice of advance forgiveness for inevitable mistakes.
“Somebody’s gonna do something insensitive, stupid, heartless, cruel, dumb, all the things utterly ridiculous,” Blanchard said. “Forgive them anyway.”
She urged attendees to embrace creativity and ritual in healing, to forgive mistakes as people navigate unfamiliar territory and to remember that gratitude and grief go together at every milestone.
“Our grief does not mean we’re not grateful,” Blanchard said, describing how survivors experience both emotions simultaneously as recovery progresses.
Blanchard also stressed the importance of ritual and ceremony to mark losses, recounting how New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward held a funeral at the levee breaks one year after Katrina.
“Everything we did before that we felt guilty about,” she said, quoting a resident. “It’s like we needed to be able to say goodbye in order to build something new.”
During a question-and-answer session, Brenda Hughes, Kerrville City Council member and mayor pro tem, thanked Blanchard for teaching that “it is okay to cry.”
Brittany Lehmann, a local case manager, said Blanchard’s words resonated deeply: “If they lived it, then we could hear it.”
Carmen Dell, another case manager, asked how to manage empathy in such emotionally demanding work. Blanchard advised treating observations as information rather than absorbing clients’ feelings and encouraging survivors to recall past challenges they overcame.
“You don’t go with them. You observe it and you feed it back,” Blanchard said. “Feeling their feelings is, as laudable as it sounds, is not helpful.”
She recommended using appreciative inquiry, asking clients about the last time they felt this way and how they overcame that challenge.
Austin Dickson, CEO of the Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country, provided updates on recovery efforts and outlined the foundation’s vision to “rebuild stronger than we were before.”
The foundation raised $30 million within one week of the flood and made $5 million in grants. Within 30 days, donations reached $100 million from supporters worldwide.
Dickson highlighted case management as the foundation’s first and most important investment in recovery.
“These women and one guy, Randy, they are the ones that are absorbing the shock of the pain in our community,” Dickson said.
Out-of-community people have asked what kind of case management the effort brought in, Dickson said.
“We are all that we need. We have everything we need right here,” he said. “All of them (case managers) are local people who work in concert with local organizations funded by the community foundation locally. It can’t get more Kerr County than that.”
Currently, 625 households have registered through rebuildkerr.org and are matched with case managers. No families remain on a waiting list, Dickson said.
The foundation’s recovery strategy focuses on four pillars: emergency needs, housing, mental health, and community and culture.
“Last night, 111 households — more than 200 individuals — slept in apartments, houses or AirBNBs at no cost through the temporary housing program. At least four homes are complete, and the foundation races to achieve additional milestones before Christmas,” Dickson said.
The foundation offers down payment assistance for qualified flood victims whose homes were rendered uninhabitable, with $1 million granted and up to $4 million committed. Programs also include repair and rebuild assistance, RV and mobile home replacement and an Unmet Needs Fund for items such as medical equipment, tools or car down payments.
Case management serves as the gateway for families who need assistance, Dickson said. Case management solves all problems.
“They are our problem solvers. They are our shock absorbers and that’s why the streets literally should be named after them,” he said.
The foundation contracted with the Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute to conduct a mental health needs assessment. A final report will be available next week, with a public presentation planned for January.
The foundation also created the Family Mental Health Care Fund in partnership with Meadows and the Lucine Center in Houston to reimburse mental health care services for those who lost family members in the flood, regardless of where they live.
The foundation analyzed where people who died in Kerr County came from and made investments in organizations where a collection of those people had lived, including Centers, a children and adult therapy program in Midland and Odessa, where eight people who died in Kerr County that day were from.
As of Monday morning, the Community and Culture Fund opened for grant applications on a rolling basis to support civic assets including the river, public spaces, parks, small businesses, nonprofits, public safety and education.
Dickson emphasized collaboration as essential to recovery.
“The community foundation is not, contrary to popular opinion, a human service agency,” Dickson said. “We’re a philanthropic institution and we manage philanthropic resources and distribute those resources. By definition, we must work in collaboration.”
Tina Woods, president of the Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country, opened the meeting by recognizing the extraordinary mix of people involved in recovery efforts.
“Each one of you in this room is making it possible for our community to recover,” Woods said. “You are truly the light that shines through the darkness of loss and grief.”
Peter Lewis, vice president of the foundation, led attendees in the Serenity Prayer and shared words from Lawrence of Arabia: “The dreamers of the day are dangerous people, for they may act their dream with open eyes to make it possible.”
Blanchard reminded attendees that millions worldwide have faced similar circumstances and that the community possesses the wisdom to navigate recovery.
“We were together, I forget the rest,” Blanchard said, quoting women in Rwanda after genocide. “If you forget to be together, this is gonna be much more painful than it needs to be.”
The meeting included presentations on data, interactive sessions about recovery ecosystem components and opportunities for attendees to connect with others involved in various aspects of the recovery process.
Read full article here: https://www.hccommunityjournal.com/article_2a583c2a-74ba-47b1-92d2-07565c4c22b1.html
Leave a Reply