PRESS RELEASE: PUERTO RICO ORGANIZATIONS LAUNCH THE FIONA COMMUNITY RESPONSE FUND

Community Leaders Launch Emergency Fund to Rush Critical Aid, Resources To Areas That Need Help

SAN JUAN, PR – Community organizations across Puerto Rico have launched the Fiona Community Response Fund and FionaResponse.org to respond to the impact of Hurricane Fiona, which has left 90% without power, more than 60% without potable water, catastrophic flooding and massive damage to the island’s infrastructure.

Led by social justice organizations like Taller Salud, Ayuda Legal Puerto Rico, Instituto para la Agroecología, Teachers Federation, Agitarte, HASER, étnica, and María Fund, this emergency fund will rush critical aid and resources to communities that need it most, some of them redistributing to other grassroots organizations with whom they partner closely. 

Donating to the Fiona Community Response Fund will help save lives.

DONATE TO THE FIONA COMMUNITY RESPONSE FUND HERE

“Nearly five years to the day after Hurricane Maria, another disaster requires the people of Puerto Rico to come together and save ourselves,“ said Xiomara P. Caro Díaz, Executive Director María Fund Puerto Rico. “There is an urgent need for more resources and more funding to save lives. We urge all those who are able to please donate whatever you can to assist the people of Puerto Rico.

“For years we have been working in our communities, and finding ways to provide support long-term - including the creation of our own organizations. This fund is focused on immediate relief, while we will keep lifting up the need for long-term, permanent resources to guarantee community infrastructure so this level of crisis does not happen again. If you are able to give, please do so. But we also recognize that what we are going through right now is connected to hundreds of years of exploitation and colonialism that impacts disaster response to this day – and we are committed to building power with our people in this moment to change the tide.” 

DONATE TO THE FIONA COMMUNITY RESPONSE FUND HERE


BACKGROUND ON THE EVOLVING SITUATION IN PUERTO RICO

  • CATASTROPHIC FLOODING: The Puerto Rico National Guard has rescued more than 1,000 people from flood waters. 2,146 people and 254 pets are being housed in 113 shelters as of Monday. The governor said that at least three people are so far confirmedto have died. Hurricane Fiona was forecast to 12-18 inches of rainfall on Puerto Rico with rainfall of up to 30 inches in some places along the southern and eastern coasts. Rainfall is expected to continue until Tuesday evening. 

  • MASSIVE INFRASTRUCTURE DAMAGE: Wind speeds in some parts of Puerto Rico peaked at nearly 100 miles per hour and a bridge in Utuado was swept away by flood waters on Sunday afternoon. The bridge was a temporary replacement for another bridge that had been swept away during Hurricane Maria in 2017. On Sunday evening, the runways at Aeropuerto Mercedita en Ponce were completely submerged in flood waters.


ABOUT THE ORGANIZATIONS

AYUDA LEGAL PUERTO RICO is a non-profit organization that promotes legal empowerment in Puerto Rico. Our projects advance legal awareness and social impact advocacy. They lead housing and just recovery work in Puerto Rico by integrating legal empowerment strategies that support power building work.  We defend the right of people to stay and return to their homes and lands, with practices and narratives grounded in social justice work and human rights. ALPR publishes an annual report “Towards a Just Recovery.”


THE INSTITUTE FOR AGROECOLOGICAL RESEARCH AND ACTION (IALA-PR) was created as a result of the immediate need for support of agroecological collectives in Puerto Rico. After years of conceptualization, our non-profit was finally incorporated in 2018.  Today we provide the tools to allow such projects to execute their plans without having to bear the administrative weight required by the State. We support and promote these agroecological initiatives in Puerto Rico, providing them with access to administrative and financial services, physical resources (such as land and laboratories) and knowledge towards the development of new skills.  All of our efforts help build the multifunctional landscape that we envision for farmers, one where they have access to all the tools necessary for them to make better decisions that make it easier for them to create and achieve their own definition of a Good Living.

TALLER SALUD is a community-based feminist organization dedicated to improving women's access to healthcare, reducing violence in community settings, and fostering economic development through education and activism. Founded in 1979, Taller Salud is an independent, non-governmental, non-profit, 501(c)(3) organization. We believe that health is a non-negotiable human right. We define health as a state of balance that each person establishes between themselves and their environment. In this sense, we  recognize the importance of comprehensive health that considers the physical, emotional and spiritual aspects, but we also advocate for environmental health, the guarantee of a life free of violence and the development of prosperous communities that offer opportunities for everyone. We know that when women thrive, their communities grow stronger. That is why we are convinced that the health of the people begins with the health of its women.

THE FEDERATION OF TEACHERS OF PUERTO RICO is a bonafide union founded in 1966, that defends public education, the right of  students to a meaningful, equitable, accessible education, active and retired teachers’ rights, community schools and participates in alliances with other organizations to fight back austerity measures that the government of the island and the Oversight Fiscal Board have tried to implement on the shoulders of the Puerto Rican people. Education is a constitutional right that has been denied to thousands of children in the island, and it’s our duty to fight back and defend it.  As Mandela stated "Education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world."

THE MARIA FUND was created to guarantee a just and equitable Puerto Rico after the passing of hurricane Maria in September 2017, by channeling resources to local grassroots community organizing groups that recognize the political, social and economic disasters that its people had already been going through as part of the root causes. In April 2019 we made the decision to expand and deepen the Maria Fund’s work from a rapid response grantmaking fund, to a permanent resource mobilizing entity that can support a powerful and aligned ecosystem of social justice leaders, organizations and initiatives focused on organizing to build collective community power and advanced structural change. From 2017 to December 2021, Maria Fund has mobilized $7.5 M in resources, through 228 grants to 90 organizations & stipends to 80 leaders. The organizations we have supported organize in 50 of the 78 municipalities. 

AGITARTE is an organization of working class artists and cultural organizers who work at the intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality and ideology. Through a praxis of cultural solidarity, creative process and popular education, we initiate and facilitate arts and cultural projects with grassroots communities that contest U.S. cultural hegemony and propose alternatives to existing systems of oppression. We do this in our creative work by centering the experiences of oppressed people in resistance through  interdisciplinary storytelling/media, and in our mutual solidarity, through trainings, workshops and running a physical space for educational programming in Santurce, Puerto Rico.


HASER supports local grassroots actions in Puerto Rico that stimulate equity and quality of life for all living beings. Puerto Rico is going through catastrophic natural events and a socioeconomic crisis that have increased social inequality. More communities on the island are organizing grassroots actions and becoming agents of change attending to their own needs. These actions are carried out with few resources, creating more barriers in communities that already suffer the effects of the crisis and historical inequalities. Our strategy is to build a network of local actions that share resources and responsibilities to stimulate equity and quality of life and potentiate change. 


REVISTA ÈTNICA is a social and multimedia movement to make visible, amplify voices and positively represent Afro-Latino communities.Our multimedia platforms will provide a presence mainly to women, but also to black and Afro-descendant men, Afro-Latinxs and the LGTBTQIA+ community and other groups that are commonly excluded due to racial and gender discrimination.


CASA TALLABOENA is a community-based non-profit organization dedicated to the cultural, environmental, educational, health and sports training of the marginalized communities of the Tallaboa Saliente, Tallaboa Encarnación, Tallaboa Poniente neighborhoods and their sectors in the town of Peñuelas. Our organization also works so that the communities that have been affected by the consequences of environmental pollution can fight to have true environmental justice and be resilient in the face of the onslaught of natural phenomena.

Contact: 

Jack Miller, Petkanas Strategies, 201-572-0881, press@zpstrategies.com

Xiomara P. Caro, Executive Director, María Fund, 787-438-9361, xiomara@mariafund.org