“When a complex system is far from equilibrium, small islands of coherence in a sea of chaos have the capacity to shift the entire system to a higher order” Ilya Prigogine, Nobel Prize Winning chemist
The fact that climate change, and our inability to adapt to its pace, is bringing lots of transformations in most parts of the world and in our societies is no news. We know that natural and man-made disasters and emergencies of all sorts will occur and most probably their occurrence will increase exponentially, and we need to prepare.
One of the most recent examples of this is what has happened in the outskirts of the city of Valencia, a highly densely populated area, with a resident population of 1.8 million people. On the 29th of October Spain suffered the worst flooding disaster, since existing records, which hit over 75 municipalities, provoking one of the worst tragedies of the last decades in Spain. More than 230 people died, and losses have been estimated at €16.6 billion, which represents 1.3% of the GDP of Spain.
The most affected area was Horta Sud, an area in which 13 of its 20 towns were severely damaged. 250,000 people, half of the total population of the area, were affected. This is the place where Horta Sud Community Foundation (FHS) has been for 52 years, where it has gained the trust of civil society and supported over 2,000 local nonprofits, of which half are in the devastated area. FHS is member of the Association of Spanish Foundations (AEF) and since July 2023 his CEO, Julio Huerta, has been Technical Director of our Community Foundation Development Programme.
Given the situation, since October 30th AEF has tried to support FHS during this emergency situation, something neither of the two organisations are experts on. During the first few days FHS had one of the few working phones in the area. They received over 1000 phone calls on the first week, with all sorts of requests for help and offers. It was very difficult to cope with the volume of work and the diversity of the petitions.
In this chaos, Rosa and I, who run the Association’s community foundation development programme, joined the FHS team because many strategic decisions were to be made and to help them with the workload. This involved linking offers and requests, representing FHS and talking about their work in meetings with a variety of stakeholders, organising meetings with other community foundations that have experience for having faced the response to similar floods (and on this note we would like to thank those people for sharing their experience), and most importantly for offering a safe space for FHS team to blow off the steam.
Also, strategic decisions were taken at the level of AEF board, like actively promoting FHS as the best partner to channel resources for the area. We highlighted its capacity and experience in supporting local grass roots organisations, that are key for the social fabric of the area, therefore making a clear case for community foundations and their role in an emergency and in dealing with the aftermath.
Six weeks have now passed since the floods, and the situation is still of emergency, thousands of people are still not back in their houses, the streets are still covered in mud, and business are still closed. We can already say that we have learnt quite a lot during these last weeks and FHS has stepped up with some major achievements:
- FHS has put in place, in record time, sound procedures to receive donations and to match the offers of support with requests for help. Over €800,000 has been raised with the participation of more than 14,000 donors, and pledges received that could double that amount;
- A new CRM has been deployed that is keeping track of, among others, dozens of initiatives around the world, many of them of the Valencian diaspora;
- After the initial emergency days, which were much longer than initially foreseen due to the devastation of the area, FHS is already connecting with the numerous local grass roots organisations, defining its role in relation to recovery (as an evolution of its strategy and role prior to the flooding). This involved meetings with over 60 local associations and some of the federations that gather hundreds of them, to get their feedback and support to FHS plans. It has initiated the diagnosis of the losses suffered by them and is putting in place an emergency grant making scheme to support them. First diagnosis of the losses of the associations – over 150 responded in the first 7 days;
An emergency grant making scheme was established with first decisions to award more than €500,000 that will reach the associations in less than 45 days after the disaster occurred;
FHS became the “spokesperson” for civil society organisations – national and local media have interviewed Julio Huerta numerous times to get to know more about the situation on the ground;
Massive and comprehensive communications including a new website (in several languages), and social media (for four weeks one person has worked four hours a day just to manage Instagram);
Mobilisation of human resources which included around 10 people that know well FHS opting for unpaid leave at their jobs to support the Horta Sud team;
First approach to produce a strategy to mobilise resources for the next five years, both from individual and institutional donors.
We have learned firsthand, and still are, how to exercise the capacity of community philanthropy in catastrophe. Even though we are not experts, we have put our talent, connections, times and resources to help them face and go through the situation, trying to make sure that Horta Sud staff could cope with the situation and also that the main features of working in an emergency situation could be developed in record time.
We are still very much dealing with the immediate aftermath of the catastrophe and there will be more to learn throughout 2025 and the years to come. It has been, and still is, a very demanding situation and so much more work needs to be done to gather the learnings and share them across the community foundation movement.
What is obvious at this moment is that the understanding of what a community foundation is has increased enormously both for the foundation sector but also for many other institutions, companies and individuals. Nearby areas to Horta Sud are already making enquiries and working on the process to set up a community foundation, as they can see the critical role that HCF has and continues to play, especially in times like these.
If you would like to donate to Horta Sud Foundation and to help rebuild the community fabric of the affected area please go to this link
https://fundaciohortasud.helpbysc.com/afectados-dana
