Community Foundation's 9/11 Survivor's Fund closes and serves as financial recovery model | 06.03.2008 | 13:17:54 | Views: 8471 | ID: June 3 '08: On its created by the Community Foundation announced it was closing operations after seven years of providing recovery outreach for those surviving families who were affected by the attacks on 9/11 in Washington DC. In conjunction of the fund's closure, the Community Foundation has released a final report to the community, and a disaster recovery process outline. The disaster recovery process outline helps to create a protocol for case management of those affected by disasters. According to the Washington Post the Survivor's Fund "raised $25 million from more than 12,000 (DC) area residents ... helping the grieving, the distressed and the traumatized in a way that is being hailed as a model of charitable giving." The WaPo reported, "Although some leading charities cut large checks to the families of victims, the Survivor's Fund followed a unique approach to giving, establishing a long-term personal trust of sorts for the victims, their families and first responders. ... the Survivor's Fund hired professional case managers to work with families one-on-one to help them move beyond their grief and on with their lives." The Survivor's Fund approach was based on a similar model begun after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombings. Helping on a case by case basis "mean paying household bills for families who fell behind and guiding survivors to medical care and mental health housing. If a family's primary breadwinner had been lost, the charity helped other family members return to school and find jobs," the WaPo reported. Daniel K. Mayers, chairman of the Fund said immediately after the attacks, a plan was written on the way build the Fund so that those affected could be helped quickly. Stephanie Berkowitz, a case manager from VA told the WaPo, "It's not wholly acceptable in the first-responder community, the military community, to be asking for mental health services. ... We really had to educate them and help them understand the impact of trauma on your being." And Alan G. Merten, president of George Mason University said, "People came in with both their heart and their head and helped make both the compassionate decisions when asked to but also made the proper fiscal decisions when we had to." National Blueprint Tags: Response and Containment, Citizen & Community.(Click below to download file) final-survivors-fund-process-doc.pdf
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