Working for Systemic Change
It’s been a busy few weeks for Project:Camp – wildfires up and down the West Coast and Hurricane Francine barreling into Louisiana have kept us on high alert as we check in with local partners to try and meet the needs of families impacted and displaced by these disasters.
The outreach has left us with mixed emotions, quite honestly, as we’ve made great connections in these communities, but found ourselves stymied in efforts to get camps stood up. Despite our work of the past several years, we are still running into some frustrating systemic barriers when setting up camps to help give kids a space to find a semblance of normalcy while schools are closed and normal childcare networks are disrupted.
Several communities saw school closures that lasted more than a week. But even with sustained efforts to set up camps to serve kids impacted by these recent disasters, we struggled to get information about sites and to get quick buy-in from schools and the emergency response community. We know that these situations are chaotic – and we have deep empathy and respect for the individuals tasked with providing more services than resources allow – but the experience really underscored the importance of having plans in place before disasters strike so that services can be delivered promptly.
It also reminded us that the system is not designed to provide for children during these emergencies, and that some pretty significant wholesale changes have to be made in order to incentivize institutions to provide solutions for childcare. As currently constructed, the emergency management apparatus doesn’t have any mandate to ensure there are any special considerations for the needs of children. As we have mentioned many times in our work, there is not a dedicated seat in the emergency support function structure advocating for the needs of children. As a result – even where there are services being offered to help kids – no one knows quite what to do with them.
Schools, on the other hand, are incentivized to return children to the classroom as quickly as possible. Their funding is tied in many cases to meeting a set “days of instruction” quota, which can be difficult to hit if there are disaster-related school closures. The goal is seemingly good – we want kids to learn! – but can lead to frustrating outcomes in practice. Very rarely are alternatives considered to formal school for evacuated or impacted families; information about school closures trickles out on a daily basis instead of acknowledging extended closures are likely; and disaster planning is solely focused on return-to-school contingencies, not what happens to kids when schools are closed. Again, none of these are inherently bad strategies, but in practical terms they don’t produce the best outcomes for children and families during disasters.
A lot of these pain points have to do with the fact that there has never really been any organizations to step in and provide stopgap solutions for kids in these situations – which is the entire reason Project:Camp exists. After I flew down to Houston for three weeks to help run a camp for kids impacted by Hurricane Harvey in 2017, I started searching for organizations who did this work in the U.S. and – spoiler alert! – there weren’t any. So on some level we’re not surprised when we run into these hurdles, but it also can be jarring when it takes serious effort to let us set up programs to help kids process their trauma and return to a sense of safety.
Ultimately, the outreach and connections we made over the past several weeks will foster change for the future – we’re already thinking ahead and starting to help prepare for next time in the communities hit by these recent disasters.
With gratitude,
Mikey
Bulletin Board
Our Director of External Affairs Henry Meier had the opportunity to speak with a panel of guests at the 2024 After the Fire conference in Sonoma last week. The panel focused on how to help kids in the aftermath of wildfires, and touched on a lot of different ways to help support kids in the short, medium and long-term. The conference included a host of really great voices – particularly from the Maui and Lahaina community that were hit by devastating wildfires last year. Thank you to Jennifer Gray Thompson and the whole After the Fire team for having us!
Founder and Executive Director Mikey Latner recently served as a guest speaker at CalOES’s Listos “Unity in Action” panel in Los Angeles, where he talked about our work helping prepare communities all over the state to meet the needs of children during disasters. Thanks to CalOES and the Listos programming for giving us a chance to talk about this important work!
