As a program officer in Puerto Rico for Open Society Foundations, I’m at work this week in the offices of Proyecto Enlace Caño Martin Peña, a community-based group in San Juan. There is no electricity and limited running water. Volunteers, reporting in at 9 a.m., were divided into teams and sent out into the streets to canvass the community, collecting information about damage to houses. They also distributed flyers with guidance on where to apply for disaster relief from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, where to go in case of medical emergencies, and how to sort through rubbish in the wake of Hurricane Maria, the historic storm that destroyed the island of Puerto Rico.
The storm battered houses and wiped out the electrical grid. A week later, 90 percent of the island is still without electricity, while 50 percent remain without water and 57 percent have no cellular communications.
Government aid has moved slowly, especially outside of the San Juan metro area, with long lines of people waiting for the gas they need just to get to work. Many of those who still have jobs need to start as soon as possible since they have lost so many workdays already due to Maria and the previous storm, Hurricane Irma. People are still desperate to get food, since many of the island’s supermarkets remain closed. My own parents have one week’s worth of food left, no electricity, and no running water. But at least they have a roof over their heads.
In the El Caño communities, at least 1,000 homes lost their roofs. In surveying the neighborhood, I met Consuelo Martinez, a local resident who lost her roof and has made a makeshift bed and house in her garage. Her neighbors all have similar stories to tell. Many are single women, heads of their households, who are doing what they can to survive in 100-degree heat, with no electricity and little or no running water.
Proyecto Enlace Caño Martin Peña has been operating in the eight communities of El Caño for more than 13 years.
As part of its organizing efforts, it has created a Community Land Trust, a leadership school, a local bicycle business, a hotel business, and an organization that comprises the leaders of each of El Cano’s communities. Through the Community Land Trust, the group’s leaders will be able to relocate some of the local residents who have lost their homes. Proyecto Enlace is also organizing the community to clean up streets, report damage, and help each other — because help from the government is yet to arrive. This project, like those of so many nonprofits on the island, depends heavily on government funding and was already strapped for resources, relying largely on volunteers. More help is desperately needed, and fast.
Foundation Help
Puerto Rico’s political situation has made it a complicated place for philanthropy to invest. But the Open Society Foundations, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Rockefeller Family Fund were all engaged on the island before the storm.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, many foundations are looking for ways to help. Among the greatest needs that foundations are particularly well-suited to address: supporting nonprofits on the island, connecting leaders and experts with the people whose lives have been most harmed, and helping to integrate the island’s distinct culture into the approaches to recovery that have been most successful on the mainland.
Foundations can also be role models: Open Society, for example, has offered to match all of its employees’ donations to Maria relief efforts — offering $5 for every $1 pledged.
Most important, we must build on the lessons that philanthropy learned after Katrina, including the significance of fully engaging the people of Puerto Rico.
That is always important, but especially challenging because Puerto Rico is not a country or a state. It is officially a commonwealth of the United States. When the hurricane hit the island, its government was $73 billion in debt. It is estimated that the storm did damage that will tally $30 billion or more. The storm has laid bare the ways in which Puerto Rico’s political status hinders its ability to respond to disasters, economic or natural. Because of a law passed in 1917 called the Jones Act, the island can only receive shipments (including aid) from U.S.-built and U.S.-steered ships. Only 100 of these ships exist, and they serve Puerto Rico, Guam, and Hawaii. The law initially prevented any aid from coming to the island from foreign vessels.
The Trump administration’s decision to issue a short-term waiver last month was welcome, but precious days were lost as officials debated a move that was made much more expeditiously for the mainland areas affected by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma.
Furthermore, Puerto Rico cannot declare its own bankruptcy, given that territories are excluded from the bankruptcy law of 1984. This has made dealing with the island’s debt crisis much more difficult and helped lead to the appointment last year of a fiscal control board. Many nonprofits depend solely on government funding from a now-bankrupt government that can no longer pay for the services they’ve been contracted to provide.
For example: The Puerto Rican government owes the Boys and Girls Club, which has activated 13 relief centers throughout the island, $2 million for services it has already delivered.
Foundation Support
As the magnitude of the damage to Puerto Rico becomes clearer, the Open Society Foundations has begun convening calls with other grant makers to share information and discuss how best to provide support. The foundations will host a briefing for grant makers that we encourage others to join.
Many organizations working on the recovery are worthy of support, including the Puerto Rico Recovery Fund (established by the Center for a New Economy), which is both addressing immediate needs and working to set the island on a path toward economic growth as it rebuilds; the Unidos Disaster Relief Fund, set up by the Hispanic Federation, which is putting every dollar raised toward direct relief efforts; the Hispanics in Philanthropy Fund, which is making contributions to foundations in Puerto Rico; and the Hurricane Maria Community Relief & Recovery Fund, which is channeling contributions directly to grass-roots groups working to help marginalized people and neighborhoods hurt by the storm.
The island of enchantment will rise again, but only if people of good will, philanthropy, business, government, and others apply their resources and energies. I speak not only for myself but for the people of the island in the knowledge of how much can be done, and must be done, in this moment of great challenge. We owe it to Consuelo and the many other women and children who are fighting to survive and thrive on an island that will need to rebuild and reimagine itself anew.
Karina Claudio Betancourt is a Puerto Rican native and program officer with the Open Society Foundations’ Open Places Initiative.
