All Hands and Hearts

On September 7, 2017, one of the most lethal earthquakes in Mexican history, a devastating 8.2 magnitude quake hit close to the southern state of Chiapas. All Hands and Hearts identified one of the hardest hit communities, the small village of El Jicarero, who lost their school and the opportunity to build a brighter future for their children through education. Our team has been on the ground and partnering with All Hands and Hearts Mexico ever since to reconstruct the schools.

To date we have rebuilt over 22 schools, positively impacting approximately 6,000 students. We are committed to continuing repairing and rebuilding schools in this country for the long term, to support our Education for All prioritization of SDG 4 in posto-disaster settings.

https://www.allhandsandhearts.org/programs/mexico-relief-earthquake-recovery-oaxaca/

September 2022 marked the three year anniversary of Hurricane Dorian. It also marks the start of All Hands and Hearts’ third program phase of hurricane relief in The Bahamas.

On September 1, 2019, Hurricane Dorian made landfall as a Category 5 hurricane in The Bahamas with wind speeds in excess of 185 mph and bringing storm surges of 18-23 feet above normal. It was the strongest hurricane on record for The Bahamas and has tied a record for the strongest Atlantic hurricane to make landfall.

Our current work is focused on providing under-resourced families on Great Abaco with long-awaited home repairs and the installation of hurricane shutters to bring the homes up to a live-able standard and resilient to future disasters.

Previous program phases involved initial response work clearing hurricane wreckage, making resilient repairs to eight school campuses (returning 1,300 students to safe, disaster-resilient places to learn and thrive), and a roof repair/rebuild project.

Category 4 Hurricane Ida made landfall on Port Fourchon, Louisiana on August 29, 2021 – the 16th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. While the levee system that protects New Orleans held during the hurricane, multiple towns outside its protection saw catastrophic flooding and storm surge. All Hands and Hearts responded in hard hit areas to the south and east of New Orleans (St. John’s Parish), with hazard tree removal, tarping and muck and gutting homes.

All Hands and Hearts has worked in Louisiana regularly in recent years. Our work in 2022 and into 2023 is focusing on long term recovery from Ida: making home repairs for those unable to afford contractors or physically unable to take on the repairs themselves. We aim to expand our efforts into the area of mitigating damage from future hurricanes as housing recovery needs taper off.

While wildfires are a natural part of California’s landscape, they have increased in size eightfold since the 1970s. In 2020 All Hands and Hearts piloted our first wildfire relief program in Paradise, California, site of the 2018 Camp Fire, one of the deadliest and most damaging wildfires in California’s history. The program concept was to plug our volunteer labor force, especially our chainsaw trained teams, into local wildfire recovery and mitigation initiatives.

Since then, the program has expanded to other fire-at-risk and fire-affected areas. Scopes of work include removing hazard trees, planting fire resilient and erosion protective saplings, creating fuel breaks and defensible spaces, widening evacuation routes, and assisting with constructing replacement homes.

This work is designed to be ongoing and flexible as to location, although in the short term our plan is to resume with our third year of activities in and around Paradise in early 2023.

As of this writing, Hurricane Ian has just made landfall on Florida’s southwestern coast, clocking wind speeds just shy of a category 5 storm (winds of 155 mph) and bringing storm surge of 12 - 15 feet in places. As soon as search and rescue operations conclude and we’re given the green light to enter affected areas, All hands and Hearts will be mounting a robust response, in coordination with federal and state agencies and other responding organizations. Initial work will focus on clean up and stabilization of neighborhoods through mucking and gutting structures, roof tarping, chainsaw clearance of fallen/hazard trees, and mold remediation. Based on the expected degree of destruction, we will likely stay for at least a year, phasing into long term hurricane repairs for damaged homes for those unable to afford or perform repairs themselves.

Typhoon Rai (known locally as Odette) made its first of nine landfalls on December 16, 2021 in the Central-Southern region of the Philippines causing severe rainfall, flooding, and mudslides. Out of 528 schools in Southern Leyte, 312 were impacted by Odette. From these 312 schools, there are 522 totally destroyed classrooms and 1,673 classrooms with major damage.

Following discussions with the Department of Education and UNICEF it was clear that there is a compelling and immediate need for classrooms, especially as the Philippines is also reducing COVID restrictions and moving back to face-to-face education. With the local government only having the funding to support rebuilding classrooms at 20 of the 282 schools which received major damage, students currently have no spaces in which to learn. In order to get as many students back in classrooms as possible, we are constructing Temporary Learning Spaces for nine damaged schools to strict disaster resilience and educational standards.

The war in Ukraine has created the largest refugee crisis in Europe since the second world war. By April 23, 2022, over 5.2 million Ukrainian individuals became refugees and 2.8 million of them fled to Poland. Many shelters in Poland are not winterized, meaning those seeking safety will instead be faced with further trauma and hardship.
Our program, based close to the border in Przemyśl, Poland, focuses on repairing and retrofitting shelters currently occupied by women, children and people with disabilities. To ensure the refugee shelters are habitable our teams will take on a range of activities such as installing insulation and drywall to keep the buildings warmer, installing windows to provide watertight shelters that are protected from the elements, and constructing water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) facilities. We will also seek additional scopes of work to improve the quality of life for refugees.