One year after Hurricane Melissa crossed the Caribbean, the recovery money is arriving in small grants with local names on them. The Center for Disaster Philanthropy has awarded more than $1.2 million to 15 organizations in Haiti, Jamaica, the Bahamas and the Dominican Republic, the center announced on Wednesday, October 28. Every grantee is based in the region it serves.
“Long after headlines fade, recovery continues,” the center wrote in its announcement. The grants, paid from its Atlantic Hurricane Season Recovery Fund, cover the work that outlasts the emergency: community-based mental health support, livelihood restoration, climate-resilient infrastructure and protection against gender-based violence.
Haiti receives the largest share
Five of the grants, totaling $525,000, went to work in Haiti, the largest country share in the round. The Haitian Women’s Collective received $125,000 to coordinate recovery in Piton, Petit-Goave, Leogane and Fonfrede, Les Cayes. The Fondation Communautaire Haitienne received $100,000 for its MuSo PLUS project, a network of community savings and lending groups, and for a breadfruit processing center in Moron that turns a crop the center says is often 80 percent wasted into income for local farmers. Gwoup Konbit, a national movement built on the Konbit tradition of mutual aid, received $100,000 with Roots of Development as its strategic partner.
The largest single grant went to women farmers in Jamaica
The biggest check in the round, $150,000, went to the Jamaica Network of Rural Women Producers, to restore livelihoods for rural women farmers and build a community-led, climate-resilient agro-processing facility. Smaller grants carry specific loads. GirlsCare received $50,000 to run a trauma-informed recovery program for 15 girls and young women in western Jamaica. Guakia Ambiente received $100,000 to repair an aqueduct in El Higuito, in the Dominican Republic, restoring water access to about 200 people and 100 hectares of farmland. The Bahamas Resilience Center received $100,000 to rebuild community mental health systems in Jamaica and the Bahamas, including refresher training for providers and a new cohort of pastors and community nurses on Long Island.
Grantmaking across the region continues, the center says, so the list of 15 is a floor, not a final count. A year out from the storm, that is the honest shape of this kind of philanthropy: no single gala-sized check, but money placed with the organizations that were in these communities before Melissa and will be there for the next storm.
Read more of The Social Register’s philanthropy coverage.
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