Identify faith centers that will serve as potential recovery staging sites for distribution of water, meals and emergency goods.

The City’s Plan for Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) program engages communities and encourages individuals, families, and neighborhoods to work together to help keep each other safe during emergencies. An important component of implementing the PREP program is cultivating partnerships with faith centers, businesses, and community organizations. To adequately respond to large scale emergencies as a community, it takes the collaboration of many local partners to assist in preparing our residents for emergencies and aiding in quick recovery and response efforts. Our faith centers are widespread throughout the City and therefore offer a wide distributional effort to help people in their own communities. Building effective partnerships with faith centers helps to increase our overall mission of creating a broader emphasis on emergency preparedness within the community at large.

Over the last two years, the City has established partnerships with 15 churches located in each region of the City to effectively meet the needs of residents where they live. Faith-based centers have agreed to assist in various post-storm efforts that include hosting and providing a community meal, utilizing facilities as comfort stations, making volunteers available to help neighbors, coordinating clean-up crews, and other outreach efforts. These partnerships not only provide opportunities for City staff to serve residents, but for residents to provide support for their neighbors. Our effective organization and effective partnership with community faith centers is critical to the mission of serving our neighbors during the aftermath of any disaster.

Parks, Recreation, & Neighborhood Affairs. Last updated: December 2024.