The International Green Shield saves low-income children and families from natural disasters by strengthening their homes and schools BEFORE the next disaster strikes. We use newer, stronger and more sustainable materials & architectural designs to make homes and schools strong enough to survive the next disaster.
What exactly does that mean?
Here are some specific examples: we can do this
Officially, what we do is called disaster mitigation - think of it as preventative medicine for your home or school. It means that we prevent death and destruction by retrofitting/building homes and schools to be as strong and smart as they can be. What we do would have saved lives in the recent Haitian earthquake. What we do will save lives the next time a disaster like the Haitian earthquake hits somewhere else, maybe a earthquake in California, a hurricane in Florida or a tsunami in Asia.
For more details about our work and organization, including ways you can easily get involved, please read through the questions and links below.
How does IGS save lives?
By going to low-income areas, such as Haiti, our volunteers upgrade and strengthen house walls and foundations using newer, stronger and more sustainable metal guide rods or reinforced concrete; they strengthen bridge supports with newer, stronger, more flexible types of plastics and metals. Different types of disasters require different types of materials and engineering, but the basic principles remain the same.
A stronger house means less chance of it being destroyed, which means less chance of the people inside it dying. While we cannot prevent disasters from happening, we can prepare our communities by building them to the basic, fundamental level of quality they should be built to. Walls will likely still crack in a major earthquake and flood waters will seep in during a flood, but the chances of survival greatly increase when walls only crack instead of collapse.
If it's that simple to save lives, why hasn't this work already been done?
Culture and technology. Until recently, most communities were focused on reducing building costs by loosening up building codes and allowing the safety quality of homes and schools to be reduced in order to save money. Additionally, the types of new materials and technologies that are available today did not exist 20 or 25 years ago when a lot of the homes people currently live in were built. With recent discoveries in physics, chemistry, nanotechnology and other scientific areas, there has been an emergence of newer, stronger and more sustainable materials. These materials, however, follow the same economic pattern that any new product in the marketplace follows: they are more expensive at first and it takes years for the price to be reduced to levels where low-income people would be able to afford them (if ever).
The past is the past and today is more hopeful. We now have the materials and technology we need to retrofit/build our communities to be strong enough to survive most cases of natural disasters. Now, we need to shift the cultural mindset away from the old feeling of natural disasters being too big and too powerful for us to do anything about and realize that we can protect our cities from the oceans and our towns from the winds.
That sounds great but I live in an area that has never been hit by a natural disaster, so why should I donate or volunteer?
After any major disaster, relief efforts are needed. Your tax dollars pay for those relief efforts. So by donating and volunteering with IGS, we can pool your $50 and hours of labor together with everyone else's to strengthen homes and schools BEFORE the next disaster strikes. Your work with us will reduce the amount of damage done during the disaster, thereby reducing the cost of relief efforts and saving your money. Reducing the cost of disasters reduces the economic strain on the entire national and international community.
Why is IGS specifically focused on low-income communities?
The technology and knowledge we need to protect ourselves from most natural disasters exist, but it is generally very expensive. For example, hurricane proof windows that can withstand up to 150mph winds cost between $800-$2,000 per window (not including installation costs). A family living on $2 a day in Haiti, or on $15,000 a year the USA would never be able to afford these windows. Yet, when a disaster hits, their weakly built homes are the most likely to be destroyed - causing massive loss of life and property. The weakness of homes, schools and infrastructure in low-income areas is one of our economy's greatest vulnerabilities. By strengthening low-income communities against disasters, we strengthen our collective economy by reducing the risk of mass destruction and death where it is most likely to happen.
What about regular income people?
People in regular income brackets can afford these stronger types of materials and designs. If they choose not to purchase them, there is nothing we can do about that. Our hope is that by saving as many low-income people and properties as possible, we can help lower overall disaster proofing costs for everyone by increasing the incentives for this kind of work.
