Pisces Foundation Awards Grant for Disaster Recovery
The APA Foundation supports programs that help economically challenged and disaster-devastated communities through Community Planning Assistance Teams and other planning resources.
To further these community assistance efforts, APA and the APA Foundation have been awarded a $50,000 grant from the Pisces Foundation, which provides grants to other nonprofits to realize its vision of people and nature thriving together.
Pisces Foundation
The Pisces Foundation believes if we act now and boldly, we can quickly accelerate to a world where people and nature thrive together. Pisces mainstreams powerful new solutions to support innovators who know what it takes and are doing what's necessary to have clean and abundant water, a safe climate, and kids with the environmental know-how to create a sustainable world. To learn more about Pisces Foundation's work and collaborations, visit piscesfoundation.org.
Funds from this grant will allow APA and the APA Foundation to support communities affected by recent hurricanes in their post-disaster recovery planning efforts. APA and the Foundation will provide targeted technical assistance to ensure that climate resilience and use of green infrastructure are widely accepted approaches as communities plan to rebuild.
This effort will take a two-phased approach
During the first phase, Post-Disaster Needs Assessment and Mobilization, APA will identify national, state, and local experts and peers to conduct technical assistance at the community and regional scales; begin developing educational and training materials; and develop criteria and process for selecting a community and matching it with teams to deliver technical assistance.
Work on Phase One has already begun, marked by the release of Hazard Mitigation and Disaster Recovery Resources, a compendium of APA resources including policy guides, webinars, briefing papers, publications, reports, and applied research projects.
In Phase Two, funding from Pisces will be used to support one Recovery Planning Assistance Team selected using the criteria and process developed in Phase One. This team and the approach will follow APA's Community Planning Assistance Team (CPAT) model. By pairing a multidisciplinary team of volunteer expert planning professionals from around the country with community members, key stakeholders, and relevant decision makers, the RPAT/CPAT model seeks to foster community education, engagement, and empowerment.
The awarding of this grant continues the partnership between the Pisces Foundation, APA, and the APA Foundation. As a Knowledge Partner, Pisces provided catalytic funding for Water and Planning Connect, a conference designed to help shape the dialogue around planning and water resource management.
Top image: Sunset over Mobile Bay, Mobile, Alabama. Getty Images photo.