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Our goal is to enhance communities’ abilities to adapt and withstand disasters to be more resilient.

We are currently trying to do that by:​

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Domestic and international research revolving around disaster recovery and resilience processes.

Learn more on our publications page.

Community relationships and capacity building of community-based organizations. 

Learn how we’ve done that here.

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An open-source course meant to help individuals and small community-based organizations secure more funding through grants.

Highlights modern tools, such as AI, that can help communities develop better grant applications. Explore the course today!

CEDR is always looking for partners and to expand our reach. Learn about what we’ve done and could do to help you and your community here or here.

If you think we would be a good fit for a partnership, reach out!

Our Research

This research synthesizes findings from 108 articles, and provides a practical review of disaster recovery barriers found within the literature spanning the last 25 years. Here is a brief highlighting key findings from this academic publication.

Several questions still need to be explored, including: what are some concrete solutions to the issues we found, and what are some areas for future research? CEDR is continuing to explore these questions in a new project.

We took a bottom-up holistic approach using group concept mapping where we captured the knowledge of the experts by experience including individuals from the community AND the funders. The process involved three steps including: 

  1. Identifying issues communities and individuals face when trying to recover from a disaster.
  2. Grouping those issues into clusters.
  3. Rating those issues on importance and feasibility to address.

Using groupwisdom software, we then compared and contrasted the two different group responses and came to better understand what issues exist when it comes to communities recovering from a disaster. The results of our study then informed our targeted curriculum development, which helped address some of the vexing issues identified in our literature review and our own study driven by community voice.

We’ve already done extensive work, but several questions still need to be answered. In particular, what are some concrete solutions to the issues we found, and future directions for research? We’re continuing to explore these questions and search out additional sources that came up in our last review.

We are currently conducting a new project to improve outcomes and promote systems change in disaster assistance programs and amplify successful strategies used by individuals and communities to navigate the system of disaster assistance. Keep your eye out for blog posts and other publications here on our website!

Community Engagement

Fellows will complete the following 4 main activities:

  • Receive Grant: Up to 8 grantees will receive $15,000-20,000 to enhance community resilience with a project of your choosing.
 
  • Participate in Study: Help us capture your knowledge as experts by experience in our study
 
  • Receive Training: One organizational representative will participate in our equitable disaster resilience-module training course.
    • This training course will incorporate material from Tulane’s globally recognized Disaster Resilience Leadership Academy curriculum and additional material will be drawn from various reputable sources to specifically address issues identified through the participatory research. These multidisciplinary and evidence-based modules will include the following disaster resilience and leadership topics:
      1. Human and Social Factors
      2. Economics
      3. Environment and Infrastructure
      4. Disaster Operations
      5. Measurement and Evaluation, and
      6. Research and Grant Writing
    • The goal of these tailored training modules will be to increase equitable disaster resilience in communities, households and individuals. This will be done in a targeted way through the development of local leadership, who upon completing the course, will be better equipped to prepare for, respond to, and recover from disasters.
 
  • Grant Writing: Fellows will be aided in the creation of an additional grant proposal and in seeking out potential funders.
    • Grantees will also each be aided in developing and seeking out potential funders for a grant proposal which will act as a culminating piece of the fellowship. Through this process fellows will enhance their familiarity with seeking out funding for their communities and preparing competitive grant proposals to increase equitable disaster resilience for all.

CEDR seeks to foster community ties not only between itself and the community, but between community organizations, creating a “resilience hub” where information and resources can be shared between organizations to increase the strength, breadth, and depth of social networks that can be utilized to better prepare for, respond to, and recover from disasters.

CEDR previously designed and carried out a grant fellowship program to enhance community disaster resilience. Learn about the development process and what that program looked like here.

Please note this fellowship is currently not accepting applicants. If you would like to be notified if funding is secured and the fellowship is reopened, sign up for our listserv.

Training & Education

This open-source course covers several topics related to grant writing, including: 

  • Lesson 1: Identifying and Engaging Partners and Key Players
  • Lesson 2: Finding and Writing Grants
  • Lesson 3: Supporting Your Grants with Science Using AI

This course was designed to help small community-based organizations further develop their capacity to write and secure more grants. Even if you’re an experienced grant writer, you’ll certainly find some new tips in lesson 3 that covers how AI could be used in grant writing. 

Work with Us

CEDR seeks to foster ties with the community as well as among community organizations to better prepare for, respond to, and recover from disasters. For more information about CEDR, see this overview of what we’ve done and can do to help you, your organization, and your community.

Our Logo

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