How is UUSC different from other disaster-response agencies?
UUSC reaches groups of people who are at risk of being left out or overlooked by traditional relief and recovery operations, working with local partner organizations to identify and bring attention to the gaps in recovery — and help fill those gaps. UUSC takes action in the critical days and weeks immediately following the disaster, and then continues to work into the mid- and long term as survivors struggle to reestablish their lives and livelihoods. Large aid agencies roll out large-scale disaster programs in a one-size-fits-all approach. In major disasters, this kind of response gets a large amount of aid to a large number of people. However, one drawback to this approach is its assumption that everyone is in the same situation when the disaster occurs. UUSC, by contrast, works from our knowledge that when a disaster strikes, people are in very different situations, determined by race, class, and gender. To help illustrate this, consider the following: research shows that in a disas
