Disaster Preparedness & Resilience
Building stronger communities before, during and after disaster.
Following Hurricane Melissa, Inspire and Serve worked alongside communities, children’s homes, women and families experiencing heightened vulnerability, community organizations, government partners, businesses, churches, volunteers and humanitarian organizations to help meet urgent needs.
That experience reinforced something important: disaster preparedness cannot begin when the storm is approaching, and recovery cannot end when the immediate emergency is over.
Today, Inspire and Serve is building on what we learned—connecting community experience, research, collaboration, preparedness education and women-led approaches to help strengthen Jamaica’s capacity to prepare, respond, recover and build lasting resilience.
Why preparedness matters
18%
of a SIDS population is affected, on average, following each disaster, compared with approximately 6% in non-SIDS countries.
Source: UNDRR — Small Island Developing States (SIDS)
Jamaica and its Caribbean neighbours are Small Island Developing States (SIDS), where geography, climate exposure, limited resources and economic vulnerability can magnify the consequences of disaster.
As storms and other climate-related hazards become increasingly disruptive, preparedness must extend beyond emergency response.
Communities need the knowledge, relationships, systems and resources to anticipate risk, respond effectively and recover more sustainably.
What Hurricane Melissa Taught Us
Disaster response taught us that preparedness cannot begin after communities are already in crisis. Households and communities need practical information, emergency plans, trusted communication channels, essential resources and an understanding of their own vulnerabilities before disaster strikes. Prepared communities are better positioned not only to respond—but to recover.
Disasters do not affect everyone equally. Existing inequalities can intensify during emergencies, placing women and girls at increased risk while also overlooking the critical leadership roles they play in families and communities.
“Women and girls are disproportionately impacted by disasters and threats, including climate change.”
Gender-specific barriers can contribute to greater losses of lives and livelihoods and longer recovery times for women. Yet women are frequently excluded from shaping disaster-risk-reduction and resilience policies and programmes. For Inspire and Serve, the lesson is clear: Women must be protected during disaster—and meaningfully included in designing preparedness, response and recovery.
Hurricane Melissa demonstrated the power—and necessity—of collaboration. Government brings public systems and coordination. Private industry brings resources, infrastructure and expertise. NGOs and community organizations bring trusted relationships, local knowledge and direct access to communities.
Preparedness is strongest when these sectors work together before disaster occurs—not simply when crisis forces them together afterward. Building these relationships proactively and continuously helps identify gaps, reduce duplication, mobilize resources faster and ensure assistance reaches the people who need it most.
Hurricane Melissa gave us lessons. Our responsibility is to turn those lessons into action.
Building the knowledge needed for stronger, community-centered recovery.
Strengthening coordination before the next emergency.
Taking practical readiness tools directly into communities.
01 | Building the Knowledge
Inspire and Serve is continuing to develop the Women-Led Recovery Toolkit, a practical, field-informed resource designed to strengthen community-centered disaster recovery while positioning women not simply as beneficiaries, but as leaders and decision-makers throughout preparedness and recovery.
Built in part from lessons emerging from Hurricane Melissa, the Toolkit addresses critical issues including protection and dignity, community intelligence, inclusive assessment, local leadership, preparedness and sustainable recovery.
Inspire and Serve is leading the Jamaica Women-Led Recovery Case Study Series to document and analyze how women-led organizations and community leaders contribute to disaster response and recovery.
The research combines data, partnerships and lived experiences to build an evidence base that can inform the development of Jamaica’s proposed Women-Led Organisation Coordination Cell (WLO-CC) and strengthen gender-responsive, community-informed disaster governance. Inspire and Serve has launched a multi-country research initiative that builds on Women-Led Recovery Framework and grassroots partnerships, with the goal of translating lessons from the field into practical, scalable approaches for Jamaica and other disaster-vulnerable communities. We invite you to take this journey with us as we share more information about our findings.
02 | SYSTEMS & COLLABORATION:Strengthening the System
Inspire and Serve is exploring the development of a Women-Led Organisations Coordination Cell (WLO-CC)—a proposed network designed to strengthen the formal participation of women-led organizations in disaster preparedness, coordination and response in Jamaica.
The concept envisions a rostered and pre-credentialed network capable of contributing real-time community intelligence, sex-, age- and disability-disaggregated data, protection oversight and referral information during emergencies.
The goal is simple but important: Ensure that organizations closest to women, girls and vulnerable communities have a meaningful place within disaster coordination—not simply after decisions have already been made.
Ready Before the Storm
Explore practical, community-centered ways to strengthen preparedness before the next emergency arrives.
Explore Ready Before the Storm03 | Taking Preparedness into the Community
Voices After the Storm™ in Action
Meeting today’s needs. Preparing for tomorrow.
Inspire and Serve brings preparedness directly into the communities and institutions we serve. Our Care + Preparedness Community Days combine practical support—including clothing, hygiene and feminine-care products, personal-care items and other available resources—with interactive hurricane-preparedness education.
The goal is to meet continuing needs while helping households become better prepared for the next emergency.
Ready Before the Storm is Inspire and Serve’s practical household and community hurricane-preparedness resource.
The guide helps families think through emergency planning, household supplies, important documents, communication, personal safety, dignity, vulnerable household members and community support—because preparedness begins long before the weather changes.
View the Preparedness Guide
We listen before we act.
Our 60-Second Community Readiness Check gives households a quick and simple way to identify vulnerabilities, hurricane impacts and the preparedness resource they believe they need most.
The information helps Inspire and Serve better understand community needs, identify patterns and use community voices to inform future education, partnerships and preparedness initiatives.
Take the 60-Second Check
Disaster preparedness is not a single programme, checklist or hurricane-season activity. It is an ongoing commitment to strengthening people, relationships, systems and communities.
Inspire and Serve is committed to doing that work—from the household level to the research table, from communities across Jamaica to conversations about women-led recovery and the resilience of Small Island Developing States.
Because the goal is not simply to survive the next storm. It is to be better prepared to respond, recover and move forward—together.