San Diego Regional Disaster Fund Releases 2007 Wildfires Final Report
Apr
18
Written by:
4/18/2011 8:15 AM
A Snapshot of the Recovery and Rebuilding Made Possible by more than $10 Million Raised by the Community
April 18, 2011 – The San Diego Regional Disaster Fund, a supporting organization of The San Diego Foundation, released its 2007 Wildfires Final Report. The report outlines a broad overview of how the Disaster Fund partnered with more than 2,200 donors and more than 50 local nonprofit agencies over three years to assist in the 2007 wildfires recovery and rebuilding efforts – investing more than $10 million to rebuild the fire-stricken communities throughout the San Diego region.
According to Ted Chan, M.D., board chair of the San Diego Regional Disaster
Fund, this is the third and final report on the impact of the fires and activities of the
Disaster Fund organization since the fires hit in October 2007. The previous two
reports, published immediately after the fires in December 2007 and a second
report a year later, describe the needs created by the disaster as well as the
Disaster Fund’s strategies for addressing those needs. The final report illustrates
how the Disaster Fund allocated $10 million through five major grantmaking
strategies from 2007 to 2010.
“The San Diego Regional Disaster Fund granted a total of $10,105,196 in the
areas of (1) Community Recovery Teams, (2) Recovering lives, (3) Rebuilding
homes, (4) Restoring the environment, and (5) Preparing for future wildfires.”
Collectively, grants made by these strategies provided recovery and rebuilding assistance to more than 2,000 fire-affected families, supported nearly 1,000
educational and support events for survivors, provided scholarships to more than
100 students whose plans for higher education were derailed by the disaster, and
helped thousands of households achieve new housing through case management,
insurance advocacy and volunteer labor rebuilds.
The Disaster Fund also invested significantly to both environmental
restoration and preparedness efforts, recognizing the need to protect and revitalize
the region’s natural spaces and to prepare citizens and nonprofit agencies for future
wildfires.
“The most crucial investment a community can make after a disaster,” said
Bob Kelly, president and CEO of The San Diego Foundation, “is in its own capacity to
respond, recover, rebuild and prepare. We give tremendous thanks to the donors
who contributed to these efforts through the Disaster Fund and The San Diego
Foundation and to the nonprofit organizations in our community that did the work to
help our communities and neighbors recover.”
Kelly noted that, even as the final flames of the 2007 fires were being
extinguished, conversations through the region shared a similar theme: “What can
we do to prevent this from happening again?” In preparation to respond to the next
regional disaster, the San Diego Regional Disaster Fund has opened a new fund
specifically to meet the community recovery needs of future natural and manmade
disasters in the San Diego region – a nest egg for future response and recovery. To
donate to this fund or for more information, contact Robyn Sharp Chatten at 619-235-
2300. You may also donate online at www.sdfoundation.org under How To Give.
For a full copy of the report, visit
www.sdfoundation.org/sandiegoregionaldisasterfund.
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