These guidelines are provided to inform cultural competency and reasonable religious accommodation mandates for U.S. Mass Care providers, and to assist staff and volunteers in competently meeting the needs of Buddhists during disaster response or recovery operations.
Your whole community benefits when people with particular vulnerabilities are supported. Accommodating their needs, especially during disasters, allows families to stay together, preserves natural support systems, prevents or mitigates acute medical conditions, and permits you as a leader to focus
Your leadership may be needed to ensure that LGBT survivors receive full access to assistance programs and services during all phases of the disaster lifecycle, but especially in relief and recovery programs.
As a religious leader, you can guide families to resources for helping their children cope. Like adults, children need to make sense of things that happen; their families can help them to understand, and to reestablish trust, hope, and a
As a religious leader, you can serve to ensure that all people with unmet needs, regardless of immigration status, receive the support necessary for sustainable recovery, whether by providing direct services or by advocating for humane recovery policies.
Financial and material donations are part of the fabric of disaster recovery—and a traditional function of faith communities and their houses of worship.
Volunteering is an important part of individual and community response to a disaster. It creates solidarity within and between communities as it taps the enormous reservoir of gifts and skills of individuals who desire to serve their neighbors near
As a religious leader, you can help your congregation and community prepare for the hazards of a heat wave by providing information on how to cope with the heat, attending to the particular needs of vulnerable persons, and offering your
As a religious leader, you can help your congregation and community prepare for the hazards of extreme cold by providing information on how to cope with the cold, by attending to the particular needs of vulnerable persons, and by offering
Many disasters create localized or community-wide debris fields or mud flows. Religious leaders and volunteers from their congregations are ideal partners to work with emergency managers at debris removal and cleanup.