Recovery is more threading a needle than it is solving an equation. With such uncertainty, there is seldom a “right” answer. The good ones - and we have good ones here in our community and region - consider many facts and opinions before making extremely tough decisions. My personal hope is that we hear “Grace” more, and “I demand” less.Ĭommunity leaders have more information than most other folks do, and more perspectives to balance. I wish there were calls for equal measures of patience, kindness, regard and understanding. But we need more than just brute force and iron will. We need those traits to motivate and drive us to keep going forward and persevere. The messages we hear after a disaster are necessary ones: be strong, be tough, fight through it, be resilient. Short of that, however, I have my own opinions. I think it would be a fascinating case study for a sociologist to research. It is yet one more impact that leaves a legacy after a disaster. But as the recovery was inevitably delayed, as it always is, nerves frayed, finger pointing increased, sides were taken, and many leaders were voted out, quit, or were fired. “We’re going to beat this … together.” There was a common enemy: the disaster. In nearly every community, there had been a coming together and single purpose after the initial shock faded. There was certainly much physical destruction of public and private property, but a shared experience was the damage to the civic infrastructure as well. There were unique challenges in each, but also several commonalities. We’ve visited their communities, which also were severely impacted by natural disasters - from floods in Fargo and Cedar Rapids, to tornadoes in Oklahoma City - and learned about their experiences. We’ve developed deep friendships and gained insights from those colleagues. Cargill Foundation led to the formation of a cohort of 18 other community foundations active in disaster across the Midwest. Joplin not only survived, but it has prevailed in the years since. Our work there also built lasting relationships that endure to this day. We made our final grant for Joplin’s recovery on the fifth anniversary of the tornado, which goes to show that recovery is a long, deliberate process. Those lessons have helped to inform our current work on this COVID-19 emergency … a completely different kind of disaster. We granted and distributed nearly $13 million for that awful event, and learned so much about community recovery. We had been involved in natural disasters before, but nothing of this scope. The storm caused nearly $3 billion in damage. Some 160 perished, and more than 1,100 were injured. Nine years ago this month, an EF-5 tornado hit Joplin. This post by Brian Fogle, President and CEO of the Community Foundation of the Ozarks (CFO), originally appeared in CFO’s The Philanthropist newsletter.
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