The ChamberPost

Hurricane Season is Here Again

by Gerald McSwiggan

How often do you think about helping communities that have been devastated by disasters?  Many company foundations and community relations staff members think about this topic every day, and even more so now that hurricane season is upon us again. 

Last year, BCLC published a report entitled "On The Brink: Re-Engineering the Nation's Disaster Response Processes" where companies like Office Depot, UPS, Abbott, Fed Ex, Google, State Farm and others wrote about best practices to change the way our country handles disasters.  The major question in the report was what happens to communities after the TV cameras leave and people stop talking about the terrible things that happened?  The answer, all too often, is that communities struggle.  Countless companies across the nation want to change this fact.

Office Depot Foundation: Leading by Example

by Gerald McSwiggan

On Thursday, May 14, Florida Governor Charlie Crist awarded the Office Depot Foundation the Governor’s Hurricane Conference Corporate Award. The award acknowledges the Office Depot Foundation "for contributing generously to hurricane relief agencies in Florida for 15 years and promoting important new strategies for recovery, rebuilding and mitigation."

There are a couple things to note from this. 

First, the hurricane conference has been an annual event in Florida for the last 23 years.  I have been to a number of conferences in the past few years that were not completely focused on disasters, but had disaster-related breakout sessions.  My experience is that unless there has been a major disaster shortly before the conference, the disaster sessions are not very well intended.  But in Florida, where everyone is fully aware of the hurricane threat, they hold an annual conference to prepare.  This is leading by example. 

The second thing to note is this.  Floridians know a thing or two about disasters, which makes this award to the Office Depot Foundation so impressive.  If they say that Office Depot has been "promoting new strategies for recovery, rebuilding, and mitigation," I think that they know what they are talking about.

Partners Make Earthquake Recovery Program Successful

by John P. Howe, III, M.D.

Project HOPE, in close collaboration with China’s Ministry of Health, officially launched the China Rehabilitation Medicine Program in Beijing on Tuesday (post here). This comprehensive three–year program is addressing the need of rehabilitative services for those recovering from injuries suffered during last year’s earthquake.  At the same time, the program is helping to build rehabilitative care throughout China.

Of course, the comprehensive program would not be possible without the generous support of Project HOPE donors.  While the goal of the program is to bring standardized rehabilitative care to those suffering from earthquake related injuries, the scope of the project which works at the community, city, provincial, and national levels has allowed our donors to get involved at many different levels.

Project HOPE - Helping Victims of 2008 China Earthquake

by John P. Howe, III, M.D.

May 12, 2008 will never be forgotten by the Chinese people. The massive earthquake in China’s Sichuan Province that claimed nearly 70,000 lives and injured hundreds of thousands more has also not been forgotten by Project HOPE and our generous corporate donors.  On the one year anniversary of this tragic event, Project HOPE continues to help with recovery efforts and today we are launching the China Rehabilitation Medicine Program. The comprehensive three-year program, a collaboration between Project HOPE, China’s Ministry of Health and our generous corporate donors, will increase the accessibility and quality of rehabilitation services so desperately needed by those recovering from earthquake-related injuries in the Sichuan Province. But the program, like many of Project HOPE’s sustainable health care programs, will do much more. The China Rehabilitation Medicine Program will also serve as a platform to improve overall rehabilitative care throughout China to help those in need now and into the future.

Strategic Frameworks and Community Systems

by Taryn Bird

As BCLC kicked off our 2009 Corporate Community Investment Conference in Chicago, Michael Gallis, Founder, Gallis and Associates spoke to the crowd of over 300 businesses, nonprofits and governments about the future of strategic development domestically and globally.

BCLC has placed its three programmatic focuses on the following: Global Development, Community Investment and Disaster Assistance and Recovery. One might think these three areas of have divergent priorities and unaligned focus. As Michael Gallis presented to the conference this is not the case. The strategic planning that is necessary inside disaster prevention, community and global development are more aligned than one might think.

Questions he posed to the crowd were: How do we develop community infrastructure systems that we will help to lessen the amount of post disaster reconstruction and rebuilding?  Would it not make sense to spend a little more on the front end of economic planning projects in the gulf coast to avoid the billions spent on rebuilding them once they have been disseminated by natural disasters?

The importance of systems thinking through strategic frameworks will help communities domestically and globally to think about prevention verses quick tactic reactions. Going from reactive to proactive system approaches inside these areas of development will lead us to change our traditional thinking and move towards a framework that complies with the changes that has been brought on by the 21st century.  

Michael Gallis is a senior advisor for BCLC and will be working on addressing these exact questions. If you are interested in more information please visit our website for more information. 

Rally for Recovery

By Kitty Taylor
 
This morning in Chicago, BCLC Executive Director Stephen Jordan and Director Katie Loovis unveiled Together for Recovery -- a national initiative to connect Americans with business resources and services that help fight the recession and accelerate long-term recovery.
 
Many business officials participated in the launch, telling the audience what their companies are doing to help individuals and communities during this tough time in our nation. "In times of distress," said U.S. Chamber president and CEO Tom Donohue, "businesses play the role of problem solvers."
 
We invite you to participate in this initiative -- visit the website to learn about the resources that are available -- now, at no charge -- to help Americans recover from the recession. If your company has an initiative that is helping but not yet listed, please email us to let us know.

Company Donations Already at Work Against Flu Scare

by Gerald McSwiggan

Even in the midst of implementing their own continuity of operations to prepare for the H1N1 flu, companies are finding opportunities to help those affected.  Take the following three examples:

1. Abbott has sent more than $860,000 in antibiotics, pain medication and pediatric and adult nutritionals to Mexico through its partners AmeriCares and Mexican Order of Malta.

2. Merck's Mexico office made a donation of 80,000 doses of PULMOVAX (local brand of Pneumovax to treat secondary lung infections following swine flu infection) to the Mexican government.

3. Roche donated 5 million packs of Tamiflu to the WHO, including 3 million packs in a "rapid response" stockpile that can be deployed at the request of the WHO.

There are other reports of soap companies donating hand sanitizer to airports in Mexico.

These examples of corporate citizenship in times of crisis are not isolated cases.  During every major disaster, businesses step up with cash and in-kind donations to help victims of disasters and to help communities get back on their feet. 

For more information about businesses responding to disasters, including pandemic flu, click here. 

Rally for Recovery: Businesses Step Up Across America

by Stephen Jordan

BCLC has identified more than 200 corporate programs to help Americans respond to the economic crisis and accelerate recovery.  These programs are offered free of charge to targeted beneficiaries, but we estimate their dollar value to exceed $3 billion. And these programs don't even include operational decisions, such as those by Intel and ExxonMobil, to proceed with multi-billion dollar investments and hiring programs.

It's obvious that no single government agency, nonprofit organization, or company will be able to identify a "silver bullet" to immediately turn around the economic crisis. However, BCLC has identified a number of core focus areas that can help ease the burden of the recession, including:

• foreclosure prevention and housing counseling
• bankruptcy prevention and financial counseling
• job training, career pathing, and skills training
• business start-ups, stay-ups, grow-ups, and bankruptcy prevention
• basic individual and community needs

How to Respond Effectively to Disasters

by Kitty Taylor

We still are in the public comment period for our new study on "State Government Policies to Reduce Losses from Extreme Events and Help Communities Recover." In my last post  I outlined three policies meant to reduce the impact of extreme events. Now I'd like to direct your attention to policies #4 and #5, focused on how states can respond effectively when disasters happen:

4. Create and maintain capable, effective emergency response systems

5. Establish systems to protect people in harm's way

We've seen in recent year that some communities struggle to respond effectively to major disasters, while others seemed focused, fast, and efficient in their response. According to our lead researcher, Prof. Dan Alesch from the University of Wisconsin – Green Bay:

"Extreme events are not, in and of themselves, disasters. They trigger consequences that result in disasters. … The most easily observed consequences of extreme events are the immediate damages to the built and natural environment. If those are the only consequences, the community faces time-consuming and costly clean-up and rebuilding. Often, however, the immediate damage triggers serious adverse economic, social, political, and environmental consequences that cascade through a community."

This study, supported by the Allstate Corporation, is meant to help states better understand their own individual strengths and weaknesses in disaster management and to learn from the experiences of communities that have suffered disasters over the past 15 years.  During the public comment period we invite you to review our study and offer your comments on the accuracy, usefulness, and rigor of the policies. Public commenting is ongoing until May 1.

The Supply and Demand Sides of Disasters

by Gerald McSwiggan

Last week I attended the Disaster Recovery Journal conference in Orlando, FL.  Around me were over 500 business continuity and disaster recovery experts from companies all across the U.S.  It was an impressive group of professionals whose purpose in companies is to make sure that business operations are maintained or quickly recovered after a disaster. 

BCLC’s major focus is ensuring that communities are able to recover quickly from disasters.  Business continuity is an important part of community recovery because the faster companies are able to get back up and running, the faster the community can get back on its feet. 

However, there is another side to the story that often goes unexplained an unrealized.  It can best be explained with simple economic terminology.  Every market has both a supply side and a demand side.  In a disaster, both of these aspects of the market are disrupted.  Business continuity, the major emphasis of the Disaster Recovery Journal conference, is charged with restoring the supply side of the market. 

But what about the demand side?  A business can recover within hours after a major disaster, but if the community doesn’t recover, who will the business sell its product to?

Business continuity and community recovery are two concepts that go hand in hand, and unless businesses think about both of them, they are missing one entire side of the equation. 

On June 18 and 19 at the Chamber headquarters in Washington, DC, BCLC will be looking at how businesses can work in their communities to help them recover.  We are hosting our annual exercise that brings together members from the business, government, nonprofit sectors to practice a realistic disaster scenario.  This year, we will be practicing how to recover from two disasters that happen back to back in completely different locations.  If you would like more information, please email me.