How
We are establishing a dedicated facility to support humanitarian aid workers and disaster responders and military veterans who have been recommended by our partners.
It is important to have a place dedicated to the unique needs of this population. A place where they can go where they know they will be welcomed by people who have an intimate understanding of the effects of their work. After all, we, too, are aid workers and disaster responders. The Refuge Project offers a place to rest and services for temporary residents who are here for a transitional period before moving on to the next assignment or homeward journey as well as a number of specific services for longer term, regularly returning residents who are “home basing” out of a project site.
We will be offering training in skills that are critically needed in humanitarian aid efforts. These skills are useful for anyone coming through our doors and focus on skills in building, safety, aid, and risk management that can be adapted to many different situations. The more a person knows, the more they are capable of when it counts.
Part of the training that we offer is in community outreach to use and strengthen skills that are taught in the facility. This gives residents real world experience and helps both residents to grow their skills and gives the local community much needed support.
A variety of other benefits will also come from the structure of the project such as:
• Providing assistance with different forms of fundraising through social media and crowd sourcing so that residents can fund more time in the field
• Providing a centralized database of many different types of information useful to humanitarian aid and disaster response workers
• A secondary network of communication to facilitate coordinated efforts between different groups in a relief effort. Often one group discovers a service or resource that would help another group in some way, or a person attempting to complete a task can ask a question to a variety of groups and avoid spending time and resources to locate something another group has already found or has access to.