Crisis Recovery Effort

In late 2005, more than 7,000 Hurricane Katrina evacuees were relocated to Chicagoland—and United Way was uniquely positioned to react quickly and effectively. Our deep network of relationships with leading health and human service providers, government, corporations and thousands of individual volunteers, enabled us to immediately mobilize the resources needed to respond to this unprecedented crisis in our region.

In the weeks immediately following the hurricane, United Way recruited and deployed more than 1,300 volunteers to help connect evacuees to emergency services such as temporary food and shelter, short-term financial benefits and medical care. These caring men and women logged more than 6,000 hours, greeting evacuees at local airports, working at intake centers across the region and answering phones in an evacuee call center that we established.

"Today, the Crisis Recovery program is heralded as an international model for dispensing health and human services after a crisis." —Pioneer Press

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United Way also established a local Hurricane Relief Fund that quickly raised $2.6 million dollars, enabling agencies in our region to ramp up capacity. For nearly two years, agencies in our region did not receive any FEMA money whatsoever and relied on United Way dollars to enable them to assist the evacuees in our region.

Throughout 2006, United Way of Metropolitan Chicago focused on addressing the long-term needs of evacuees, creating a regional Crisis Recovery Coordinating Council comprised of representatives from United Way, Red Cross, Illinois Department of Human Services and the City of Chicago. The Council established a case management program to help evacuees rebuild their lives and become independent by linking them with counseling, job training and placement assistance, permanent affordable housing and more.