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Build Partnerships

As disasters become more widespread and severe, we will need to engage with new community groups or work with them more frequently. To further our engagement efforts, and build on our existing community knowledge, we can engage partners to learn about a community. A community’s capacity is the combined strengths, attributes and resources available to manage and reduce disaster risks and strengthen resilience. As we work with underserved communities, we can demonstrate our understanding and empathy to build trust.

When working with a new partner or contact, it may be helpful to ask questions that move toward establishing a common understanding of their needs and capabilities for growth. Community partners may represent a subset of the whole community, or they may align to a specific interest. Consider how they are situated within the community, the differing perspectives they represent, and be respectful of multiple viewpoints. Emergency managers may wish to begin these conversations with questions to better understand the experiences and perspectives of the individuals or organization. Appendix A: Learning About Community Through Partners provides sample questions to help start these conversations.

Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility in Exercises: Considerations and Best Practices Guide

This guide includes an overview of building inclusivity into exercise approaches, program management considerations to integrate the whole community in exercise design, and considerations for exercise pre-conduct, conduct and post-conduct activity to help implement diverse, inclusive and equitable exercise programs.

To establish strong partnerships, community-based organizations need to understand the roles, responsibilities and capacities of emergency managers. Create mutual learning environments where you share your emergency management expertise while learning about the community. Informing communities can increase their confidence to prepare for, respond to and recover from disasters. Emergency managers can inform the community by holding a Lunch and Learn with a partner, facilitating a Q&A session, conducting a site visit, hosting a community roundtable or showing up to an event and providing their subject matter expertise.[5]

Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) can be used to outline the role each organization will play before, during, and after an incident, and explain the processes for coordination. Common components of MOUs are organizational details, goals and objectives, operating principles, expectations, roles and responsibilities, and accountability.

Communicating and developing an engaging process with partners is critical to aligning everyone on the goals of engagement to address community needs. When developing an engagement process, work with partners to determine what success looks like before engagement begins to co-create partnership outcomes.

Engagement Snapshot: Region 2 Long-Term Recovery Groups in Puerto Rico

FEMA collaborated with the Puerto Rico Voluntary Organizations Active in Disasters (PRVOAD), contributing to the recovery of individuals, families, and communities in Puerto Rico. The whole community approach involves long-term recovery groups (LTRGs), comprised of representatives from local faith-based organizations, non-profits, government entities, private sector companies, and other organizations within the community.

PRVOAD leads the collaboration with over 350 volunteers across all LTRGs, maintains the organizations within each LTRG to support a unified approach to training and recovery processes, and provides recovery support to their respective communities by enforcing the 4C's – Communication, Coordination, Collaboration, and Cooperation. FEMA has supported the LTRG efforts by identifying, developing, and providing solution-based recommendations and best practices for developing and implementing each LTRG process. They also identified gaps and challenges associated with available resources to provide technical guidance to achieve LTRG's effective and efficient independence.

A whole community approach ensures all perspectives, experiences, and subsets of a community are represented and considered, resulting in meaningful outcomes that are beneficial to all.