Brief overview:

This project will focus on community based organizations (CBOs) working on disaster resilience in Oregon. Sustainability starts with the individuals within an organization, and with increasing frequency and severity of disasters (wildfires, flooding, smoke events), it is a critical time to understand how to best support the sustainability of organizations helping vulnerable populations from specific cultual communities. There is a need to understand how CBOs are navigating their own wellness in the midst of the significant crises happening around them, and how are they able maintain continuity for safe spaces for communities while navigating these crises. The United Way of the Columbia Willamette is looking for a team to help support their focus on leading with equity, and engage in a project focused on sustainability and development, environmental justice, policy and planning and behavior, education and communication. This project provides the opportunity to engage with United Way and their networks, to help community-based organizations deal with the need to adapt and transform, in a time of intensifying environmental issues, mainly climate adaptation.

The project will explore the intersection of climate science and the real-world practices United Way and other CBOs employ, focusing on how they could be adapted for sustainable transitions in supporting workforce wellness in high stress environments, culturally competent and clinically-informed approaches to climate anxiety and displacement, and organization training and resources for trauma informed care. This project seeks an intersectional justice lens on climate vulnerability and adaptation; workforce dynamics; hazard exposure; and community revitalization.

In particular, this project will:

1. Inventory existing CBOs working on climate adaptation and disaster resilience (where they are, what they are doing)

2. Identify and synthesize available resources to CBOs and disaster resilience work, focused mainly on research areas that can advance internal and external CBO workforce wellness in this climate adaptation space, such as workforce wellness in high stress environments, culturally responsive and clinically-informed approaches to climate anxiety and displacement, organization training and resources for trauma informed care. Additionally, explore resources that support workforce wellness across sectors and organizations.

3. Conduct engaged research with identified CBOs to understand how CBOs are navigating their own wellness amid significant disaster crises, what strengths and resources they have, what needs and gaps they see, and currently practiced culturally responsive strategies to wellness in the workplace. Additionally, to identify how CBOs evaluate the effectiveness of their wellness strategies and the strengths/weaknesses of these evaluations.

4. Link findings from synthesized resources to identified CBO needs through shared learning, potentially some resource creation (e.g. a guide to relevant resources, workforce welless policy review practices, list of best practices etc).

Goals & Objectives:

The overarching objective of this work is to create webs of synergy across disciplinary boundaries to compile the best available science and learning processes for better supporting the networks of CBOs engaging in disaster resilience. This project will offer the disaster resilience work of United Way and broader networks an accessible database of relevant and effective wellness strategies and insight towards how CBOs understand, value, and target wellness in their practices.

Theoretical Justification, Social Benefit, or Significance:

This proposed research has a direct real world impact, as it is informed by a current set of questions United Way is facing in thinking about how to use limited resources to better synergize existing resources on these topics, and how to intentionally lead with equity to advance learning for CBOs that are “supporting disaster preparedness, relief and recovery by prioritizing communities of color and the needs of our community based partners...” This work can inform United Way’s work, as well as the broader network of CBOS.

Specific Activities & Duration:

The scale of the project is reasonable for the timeframe and team size. The exact scope and scale of the four main components of this projects (outlined in the overview above) will be adapted to the team and prioritized between the team and United Way. Through careful work planning, we will work together to first plan, and then adapt as needed throughout the project to ensure the scope and scale of the work is reasonable for the team’s timeframe and capacity.

Integrative Approach:

As described in the next section, this project requires an interdisciplinary approach because disaster preparedness and resilience require a range of input, ranging from cultural, mental and emotional wellbeing to science communication, natural resource management and disaster preparedness, public health, and crosscutting theses of justice and equity. Depending on the team members, this work could also involve a range of quantitative and qualitative research skills such as content and data analysis, interviews, focus groups, shared learning and resource and communication materials development.