Day 1: TALK STORY: From Crisis to Community: Service and Integration Post-Maui Fires

 

“There’s a lot that can be done if you open up the doors and just change the way that you do things.” —Jim Alvey

 

“We don’t do anything globally without partnerships. As a disaster relief organization, we’re trying to get the most relief, the most amount of people, the fastest amount of time, for the least amount of money. And you don’t do that by yourself.” —Danielle Dreis

 

2024 WILDFIRE LEADERSHIP SUMMIT

 

When disaster strikes, the path to recovery often requires a collaborative effort between private and nonprofit organizations, working hand-in-hand with the affected community. This powerful synergy can unlock innovative solutions and ensure resources reach those in greatest need. By bridging gaps and leveraging unique strengths, these partnerships become a driving force in restoring hope and resilience in the aftermath.

Facilitated by Vidya Simpath, the Senior Product Manager of Amazon’s Disaster Relief Program, this discussion unpacks the invaluable lessons learned in the wake of the devastating Maui fires, from immediate housing assistance to long-term rebuilding efforts, and more. 

Tune in as our panel, VP of Disaster Recovery at Good360 Jim Alvey, and GEM Hawaii Executive Director Danielle Dreis share insights on successful private-nonprofit partnerships, adapting to unique disaster challenges, and the importance of local collaboration and grassroots efforts in long-term recovery. 

 

Highlights:

  • 01:30 What Authentic Partnerships Look Like in Disaster Recovery
  • 08:20 Navigating Failures 
  • 16:09 Digging in Locally
  • 20:22 Amazon’s Strategic Response 

 

Twitter:

From immediate housing to long-term recovery, authentic partnerships can make a difference in the face of disaster. Join Amazon’s Vidya Sampath, @Good360’s Jim Alvey, and GEM’s Danielle Dreis as they show the power of private collaboration and community-driven solutions. #Recover #Rebuild #Reimagine #podcast #wildfire #DisasterRecovery #AfterTheFire #2024WildfireLeadershipSummit #CommunityRebuilding #PrivateNonprofitPartnerships #MauiFires #GrassrootsEfforts #MentalHealthSupport #CollaborativeApproach #LessonsLearned #DisasterReliefInnovation

 

Quotes:

03:05 “We try to respond in disasters strategically because it could be very chaotic at first, and there’s a lot of players.” —Jim Alvey

03:58 “The most important thing for us in long-term recovery is having a place to put all the product. So warehousing is the most important thing for us. Otherwise, we’ve got cargo containers ready to go and no place for them to go.” —Jim Alvey

04:40 “A good partnership is one that doesn’t just start at the disaster. We’ve been working together for years.”  —Jim Alvey

05:32 “We don’t do anything globally without partnerships. As a disaster relief organization, we’re trying to get the most relief, the most amount of people, the fastest amount of time, for the least amount of money. And you don’t do that by yourself.” —Danielle Dreis  

09:38 “This is going to take a while, but if we keep asking the partners on the ground what they need now and what they project they’re going to need later. We can get ahead of it.” —Jim Alvey

10:25 “The biggest challenge, when you think about wildfires is that everyone is different. We had to come up with solutions that were super out of the box.” —Danielle Dreis

12:41 “The difficulty is to gain trust in a culture that’s been challenged with trust. So we had to back off a little bit and just wait till that trust came.” —Jim Alvey

15:48 “Make sure that you earn that trust and then you find ways to maintain that trust.” —Vidya Sampath

17:15 “There’s a lot that can be done if you open up the doors and just change the way that you do things.” —Jim Alvey

25:52 “From crisis to community— this is about all of us.” —Vidya Sampath

 

Meet the Moderator:

Vidya Sampath, Senior Product Manager, Disaster Relief Program, Amazon

Vidya Simpath is a seasoned professional with over 15 years of experience in data analytics and project management, specializing in end-to-end medical supply chain & logistics management, clinical care workflow design, and strategic planning. Known for her ability to identify and communicate complex issues with clarity, Vidya excels at cutting through the noise to facilitate informed decision-making. She has a proven track record of collaborating effectively across cultures, time zones, deadlines, and organizations, ensuring smooth project execution. Vidya’s success lies in her ability to seamlessly balance her technical expertise with management and operational responsibilities, leading teams and managing budgets with equal proficiency.

 

 

Meet the Panel

Meet Jim Alvey, VP of Disaster Recovery at Good360

Jim Alvey is the Vice President of Disaster Recovery and Philanthropy at Good360, a nonprofit organization that leads the global distribution of donations through partnerships with socially responsible companies. Jim’s work includes cultivating partnerships with foundations and companies to expand the organization’s product donor network, increase nonprofit sector collaboration, and connect with different government agencies. He focuses on medium to long-term disaster recovery efforts. 

Connect with Good360:

 

Meet Danielle Dreis, Executive Director, Hawaii, Global Empowerment Mission (GEM)

Danielle Dreis is a seasoned humanitarian professional with over a decade of experience working in developing countries. Since 2011, she has dedicated her career to providing aid and disaster response in challenging environments. Her expertise spans a wide range of areas, including marketing and communication, logistics, budget and contract management, fundraising, and team building. Danielle’s passion for making a difference in the lives of others is evident in her tireless efforts to ensure the effective delivery of vital resources and support to those in need.

Connect with GEM:

 

Transcription:

Vidya Sampath: Hi everyone. Good afternoon. My name is Vidya Sampath, and I’m the Senior Product Manager on Amazon’s Disaster Relief Team. I lead our network of Global Disaster Relief Hubs where we preposition relief supplies for donations throughout the year to any natural disasters that happen anywhere in the world. I’m really excited to facilitate this conversation today between two really amazing individuals, and two amazing organizations that they represent. 

We have Danielle Dreis, who is the Executive Director of Global Empowerment Mission, Hawaii Operations. And Jim Alvey, Vice President of Disaster Recovery at Good360. I decided that I actually won’t go into the details of their respective bios because I want each of you to actually engage with them directly over the course of the next couple of days, and also because there’s a fantastic online feature that After The Fire has put up for this conference. So in the interest of time, I’m going to dive right into the topic of today’s session, which, as Jen teeters up, is From Crisis to Community Service and Integration-Post Maui Fires through collaborative private, non-profit relationships. So my first question to Jim from Good360 point of view, can you talk about what a successful and an authentic private and non profit partnership looks like? Especially in the immediate aftermath of a crisis, but also as long term recovery and community rebuilding happens?

Jim Alvey: That’s a complicated question. Just for a little bit of background on Good360, we are a 501 c3. We’re a nonprofit. We are a matchmaker between companies that have products, and nonprofits that need products. So we’re matchmaking all the time. 10% of what Good360 does is focus on disaster recovery, which has become a specialty for me and my team, Peyton and Maddie over here. So when I say WE, again, it’s them, and WE match up products throughout disaster phases. So it’s important for us to identify, particularly in a large scale response and recovery, as Chris was alluding to the challenging part of the recovery. So the most important thing about Good360 is that we don’t do anything by ourselves. We need that vetted nonprofit network. There’s about 5,000 nonprofits active in a year, and we need you. We need companies that are supporting our efforts, primarily with products and also with funding. So those things are really important for us. We try to respond to disasters strategically, because it could be very chaotic at first, and there’s a lot of players. That certainly was seen in Lahaina, and it’s seen at most disasters. So we pre positioned product so that we can get it there quickly. We didn’t have pre pre-positioned product in Lahaina, so that threw us for a curveball. So we helped with some first responder equipment. That kind of changed our mindset in a couple of different ways, which is really listening more to what’s going to be needed. Not thinking that we know in advance what is going to be needed, but asking the nonprofits that are active, what do you need now? 

We could not have projected what the folks working in Lahaina could have needed. But what happened was that the first long phase of recovery led to the phase that we try to be most active in, which is long term recovery. And the most important thing for us in long term recovery is having a place to put all the products. So warehousing is the most important thing for us. Otherwise, we’ve got cargo containers ready to go, and no place for them to go. So for us, it’s establishing that footprint. And again, all of that takes partnerships with the UPS Foundation for shipping, with Maersk, with Disaster Relief by Amazon, with funding from American Eagle, Bombas, Lowe’s, Coca Cola, that helped us get ready to do what we are doing now. It took a long time to get to this spot. When we got there, we were ready. So we need that partnership. And a good partnership is one that doesn’t just start at the disaster. We’ve been working together for years. We’ve been working together for now a year, but it feels like years. And in all those cases, having a partnership that you’re familiar with, that you can be transparent with, not afraid to ask, not afraid to share when something doesn’t go the way you thought, that’s the ideal partnership.

Vidya Sampath: Thanks, Jim. Danielle, from what you’ve been seeing in Maui in the last year leading global empowerment missions work, how does that play out for you in terms of these collaborations? What worked, but also what didn’t work? Because there was just so much that didn’t click through the way it does in wildfire.

Danielle Dreis: Thank you. Jim, I mirror what you’re saying 100%. We don’t do anything globally without partnerships. And as a disaster relief organization, first and foremost, we’re trying to get the most relief, the most people, the fastest amount of time for the least amount of money. And you don’t do that by yourself. When it came to Maui in the recovery effort, we realized that we were brand new. We were headquartered in Miami, but it was a brand new operation that we set up very quickly on Maui. And the first partnership that we made was with the Office of Hawaiian Affairs because we realized that we don’t even have a survivor network to understand who those survivors were, and how do you reach them to let them know that you have assistance for them. And so we did a partnership with the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, as well as airbnb.org, which was the relationship that we had globally. And we were able to get very quickly, using the reach of OHA and the resources of airbnb.org about 1,200 people in immediate housing. 

So then we continue to grow the airbnb.org partnership with a state funded housing program where we had the state of Hawaii that was paying for it. Airbnb and airbnb.org that were providing the platform. And (inaudible) who was actually administering the housing side. So we were meeting with the survivors, vetting them, understanding their needs, finding a unit that worked for them, getting them set up on Airbnb if they weren’t signed up yet, and then actually getting them into housing the same day. So if you’ve got a government entity, you’ve got Airbnb, the public sector and then a nonprofit all working together towards that same cause, or that same goal of getting people quickly housed. We continue to do that. In fact, are administering the state’s rental assistance program where, again, it’s a partnership with airbnb.org, and we’re currently housing over 300 households in Airbnbs paid by the state from anywhere from six months to a year. And we just find being able to bridge that gap and administer programs where we’re able to get the funding from the state, and able to have great partners like Airbnb who’s not charging any service fees or providing their platform. It’s been super successful.

Vidya Sampath: Can I ask you both, as others have said, being a safe space here, what were those instances in the last year where the model didn’t work? And what could have been some of the reasons why?

Jim Alvey: It’s a great question, especially in this case. And since we are among friends, we’ll just say that the usual response wasn’t the right fit. So what typically happens with all the initial players in response didn’t catch the survivors. There was a vast number that stayed on the island, found some place to stay and weren’t being counted in terms of needing help. So they fell through the system, which was recognized by a lot of nonprofits that came into being during that first phase. But that was the biggest challenge, how do we help these folks that aren’t being helped elsewhere? And that’s what you were just talking about. It was really rebellious. And to your credit, which is not new for the global empowerment mission, and that’s what you do is kind of like, let’s figure this out. Get there. You got there right away. You figured out what was going on, and then you started to capture who fell through the cracks. But initially, nobody wanted to believe you. And nobody wanted to believe Lahaina Strong and some of the other groups that were saying, there are people falling through the cracks. So that was a challenge, but we had to keep moving forward. And we did so for us, just holding fast to the idea that this is going to take a while. But if we keep asking the partners on the ground what they need now and what they project they’re going to need later, we can get ahead of it because nothing could happen fast in this case. So I think the challenge was that it didn’t happen the way most fires are unique anyway. They don’t happen like any other disaster. Hurricanes were prepared for floods. We know that we could do mold remediation. There’s kind of a playbook. But fire, it’s completely different. And we’re all still learning. In this case, it’s a fire on an island. So really challenging in lots and lots of ways. When we did the delegation in December, we came back with a list of 20 things that were different about this event versus other events. So plenty of challenges, and not enough time to talk about.

Danielle Dreis: Yeah. I think the biggest challenge, when you think about wildfires, is that everyone is different. And in this case, I just don’t think anybody knew how to write the playbook. How to do it correctly. I like to say, building the plane as we were learning to fly it, and we had to figure out tools that hadn’t been used before. With the rental assistance program, I think it’s the first of his kind. And we also had huge struggles with just a lack of inventory in the housing. Half the housing burned down on the island, the affordable housing. So we had to come up with solutions that were super out of the box like, for example, turning what was unutilized. Short term rentals into long term housing solutions for survivors that just we didn’t realize. Actually, when the state had released the funds for the rental assistance program, they basically said, go and make an Airbnb reservation for a year. And we went on to make a reservation, there was one property available, and we’ve got hundreds of families that need a place to go so we really had to develop that inventory. We went out to real estate associations, to property managers and basically pleaded our case. These units are sitting empty currently. They can be used to help assist surviving households. All you gotta do is work with us. We’ll get it on Airbnb. It’s probably on Airbnb at this point, but get it priced at a point where we can afford it as a state long term. And can best utilize those funds for the longevity of this recovery effort.

Jim Alvey: I wanted to add one that I think is really important that we both faced, which is we are not from Hawaii. That’s a big deal. So gaining the trust of the nonprofits and the government that were active there was a huge challenge. Thankfully, After The Fire got us. Many of us on the island started establishing relationships, seeing what was happening. I’m understating how difficult it is to gain trust in a culture that’s been challenged with trust. So that became really important to us, for both of our organizations. There were failures, I would say, where we tried and it didn’t work. So we had to back off a little bit and just wait till that trust came. And I think it’s still growing. But I think that should be mentioned as one of the challenges. 

Vidya Sampath: I think I want to respond to that as well in terms of the concept of earning trust, but then also maintaining that trust. Because one of the things that we found on our team as Amazon’s Disaster Relief Frontline Team, what we tried to do was exactly what you said, which is say, hey, we have all of these products. And then all of our partners said, none of it is useful. And so trying to figure out, okay, put all of these supplies aside. How can we help you? And I remember getting the call from Good360 saying, we need all of the protection devices in terms of the ash and the suit covers so that when people walk back, they’re not bringing all of that back. And then trying to see within Amazon’s inventory, what does even that product look like? And where do we have it? What is that inventory? And then quickly pulling the logistics together to get that on planes heading to Maui. We worked with a couple of other partners that asked us for ways in which we could support their mass feeding programs. So we were like, great. We have supplies in the hubs. We can send you spoons, forks, cutlery, whatever you want. We can send it to you, putting all of that on a truck. And then they said, is any of that plastic? And we said, yes. And they said, absolutely, do not send that to us. We need them all to be compostable. 

And so we learned so much about how we were not ready for the moment. And so one of the big changes that we’ve had to make as a team and as a service offering to our community partners is we’ve done two things now. So our main hub, that’s in Georgia, that supports all disasters. There are no single-use plastic items in there anymore. They’re all compostable, and that was directly as a result of the requirement that was placed on us. And the bar that was set for us in terms of, how do you not bring single use items onto this island? And we changed our whole model. But then we also realized that we had nothing when it came to wildfires. And so now, just a couple of weeks back, we have started a wildfire hub concept where, thanks to the work of Good360, but also incredible partnership with After The Fire in terms of the organizations and the volunteers you put us in touch with. We now have items that support both the personal protection needs of folks following wildfires, but also mitigation equipment like fire pumps, goggles and neck gaiters. I’m forgetting all of the many items right now, but it goes back to what you said about making sure that you earn that trust. And then you find ways to maintain that trust. So Jim, I’ll come back to you. You talked about how there were lessons learned. So are you also pivoting on what you’re doing as an organization? Are there some examples you can share?

Jim Alvey: Sure. I would be remiss if I didn’t name a couple of the nonprofits that we are working with that represent what I’m going to talk about. Alfy’s here. Thank you so much. We were able to help him with an event that would seem small for anybody else, but it ended up being very, very providing a lot of hope for the teams. So at Rebuild Maui, CNHA, Salvation Army of Maui, Lahaina Strong. And of course, Nicole, wherever you are, Maui Rapid Response who kind of set the tone with a two, three person operation from day one. We listened to what they were doing, and now we’re doing that more. Our team is focusing on long term recovery. Really getting into the long term recovery groups, sticking around, asking them what they need and keeping that going, and finding creative ways that they thought was a dead end. Whether that’s a container instead of a warehouse. Or finding other ways to share product and warehouse space with a neighboring nonprofit. There’s a lot that can be done if you open up the doors and just change the way that you do things. So that’s what we’re doing. We’re digging in locally. We’ll respond to international crises when we can, but our focus has now changed to really making that impact. The numbers aren’t going to be great, but that’s not what it’s about. It’s going to be about really feeling good like we do in Sarasota County from Hurricane Ian and from Hurricane Ida in Louisiana. We’re really making a difference. So that’s the pivot that we’ve made to really localize the work that we’re doing.

Danielle Dreis: I wanted to point out another super successful story, and that is our partnership with the county of Maui, and a West Side distribution center that we were able to get upstanding and operational within a month of the fires. And that’s a huge, successful partnership. Not just be between the county, but also with the Maui Food Bank, Hawaii Food Bank and the Hawaii FoodService Alliance. Everybody stepped in. GEM, the expertise in how to run a warehouse like that, but we weren’t donating all that food. And so it’s just another way where everybody fills a gap and works together that makes it really successful. I think we were servicing about 3,000 drive through vehicles per week. 

Jim Alvey: We didn’t talk about what we did together. So the reason that we’re on stage together is that we did figure out that warehouse challenge. When I went in December with After The Fire, Nicole took me around to a bunch of places. Some others helped us. FEMA took me around. There was nothing to be had for a reasonable price or what was needed so we started the search, and the search led to GEM, who was already there establishing a foothold. And we said, is that a large enough space? Because we’re going to be sending containers and products. And they said, well, we were thinking about getting another space, so we’re helping to fund the space that we’re in now. We rebuilt it. That’s beautiful. And one criteria that Good360, and Maddie was the one that kind of pushed this, was to say, let’s not sign anything unless it’s going to be open to all the local nonprofits. They need to have access just like we do. And so that’s been great. It’s still not taken full advantage of we’re going to have to broadcast that, I think, because it’s too good to believe. But there’s warehouse space available for local nonprofits. Nicole has used it for Maui Rapid Response. Salvation Army is a couple of containers of mattresses. There are other local nonprofits happening. So just the collaboration to figure out, okay, this is the need. Let’s do this together. And yes, we’re from the outside. We want to support what the locals are doing. We’re not trying to do it ourselves.

Danielle Dreis: And also, we’ve got three open office spaces currently. So if any local CBOs are looking for extra office space, or any office space as well as warehouse storage space, we do have that available. We just opened our doors about a month ago. I am very excited about that partnership.

Vidya Sampath: I like that immediate, very specific call to action that you have for the space that’s available, and sharing that. Anything else as we close this conversation that you want to be sure that you shared?

Jim Alvey: Just really quickly, I would say that we’re talking now about the pre-positioning that you have done for fires, because it’s an active fire season. So as recently as last night, you were saying, what are you hearing on the ground? What do they need? And that’s Disaster Relief by Amazon. You may not love Amazon overall. I do, actually. But Disaster Relief by Amazon, they’re the Renegades at Amazon, they get stuff done, and they’re super strategic. I just want to give you credit for that. Thank you for all you guys do. 

Jennifer Gray Thompson: This is like speed dating for fires, we don’t have enough time to do a lot of questions and answers. But if you don’t mind, Zeke in the back is going to speak up. Because we are releasing this as a podcast as well, so it has to be loud. But he did want to acknowledge something that was so positive from Amazon. 

Zeke: Amazon actually sent staff to the line of the civic center amphitheater so that we could establish a mobile EOC. So that they could also video conference throughout the state with the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency, as well as the Maui Emergency Management Agency in Wailuku. Also something that’s really huge that Jim did. It took community members that lost everything shopping for tools, and so we have community members that have trades under their belt but didn’t have tools. And now that they have tools, they’re helping rebuild a lot of these homes in Lahaina. So that was huge. 

Jim Alvey: So Alfy, if you could just talk about the almost grassroots work that you’re doing. There’s big programs out there. But when we heard about what you’re doing, we wanted to help out. I just want you to share what you did.

Alfy Basurto: Well, thank you. I guess my name is Alfy, and I’m the Executive Director of Rebuild Maui. I had the opportunity to be involved with an event that we call Flow Fest. Basis of that event was, just imagine that you have a stack of kids who just need mental health resources. They’re sitting here. You have a lot of therapists sitting over here who want to help these kids. Before the fire, we didn’t know how to get those two groups together. So magically, after the fire, we don’t automatically know how to get them together. We just didn’t learn. And so we were impacted. We lost our home, we lost three businesses in the fire, and we saw what was happening to our kids. So we created this biggest dance we could dream up, it was at the Ritz Carlton. We ended up having about 600 kids attending. Well, what we had there too is we had a bunch of therapists that were working the event. This became a non clinical, non threatening environment to just, what I was just sharing with someone was like, imagine that you have this wonderful single friend that you just love, and you have this other single friend that you love too. But you’re like, man, I wish they could just meet. Yes, yes, we’ve been doing it for centuries, but we just haven’t applied it to kids and therapists. 

So what we did is we threw this huge, magnificent party. And I wanted games there because I thought that, hey, if you can have games there, we could encourage our kids to become playful, which would lead them to dance, which would lead them to drop some of these walls down. And so we had a big Jenga, big Connect Four, and a huge dodgeball game on the outside, which is controversial. But it turned out very, very, very well. And then we had a big twister, and we had a huge photo booth where all the therapists were working well. We did not have the funding worked out. I had zero funding. I just went forward and did this so stupid and super naive. Actually, it was canceled. It was actually canceled because I didn’t have the money. I got in touch with this man. Thank you so much. And I was like, listen, we need games at this event. We just need something for the kids to do and play. And we had all the games arrive in time, and it was really cool. He was so interested in making sure that those things arrived. So what that resulted in all the kids, they came in, they played. And the comments we got were, I’ve never seen, so interactive, so playful. We wanted to teach them how to not take shots in the bathroom. That’s really what we were trying to teach them, but it turned out that they were just becoming themselves. 

Mariana: I want to give another shout out to Amazon. I’m Mariana from the American Red Cross. It was Hurricane Maria, and we were having trouble getting our supplies into Puerto Rico through commercial flights. We could not get life sustaining supplies to the workers and to the people we were trying to help, and we got a call from Amazon. They said, what do you need, Red Cross? We’ll send a prime plane, anything you want. And I want to thank you for that.

Vidya Sampath: Well, thank you all, From Crisis to Community. This is about all of us, thank you.

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