The Louisiana Family Recovery Corps was created in 2005 following hurricanes Katrina and Rita at a time when Louisiana and its people were devastated physically and emotionally. Since then the Recovery Corps was designated by Act 313 of the 2007 Louisiana Legislature as the state’s coordinator of human services in the wake of disaster, both natural and man-made.

That legislation, along with working agreements with various state agencies and key federal partnerships, has allowed the Recovery Corps to become a leader in the field of disaster recovery both statewide and nationally.

As a leader in this field, it is essential that the Recovery Corps continue to advocate for human recovery. That is why the Recovery Corps for the first time ever devised a state and federal legislative agenda in 2009 and actively worked to advance the key pillars of the agenda. Another extremely important aspect of advancing human recovery involves the coordination of the non-profit sector into a major player with both strength and leverage. The Recovery Corps has also made this one of its priorities as it continues to advocate for families and individuals impacted by disaster.

In leading these initiatives, it is important that the Recovery Corps be able to speak to and positively influence the major issues affecting those recovering from catastrophic events. These issues include, but are not limited to, the development of a long-term human recovery plan, housing, and insurance. In addition to the key issues that affect long-term human recovery, the Recovery Corps has also taken on a leading role within Louisiana's non-profit sector. The Recovery Corps will use its unique position within the state to assist in organizing and coordinating the non-profit sector around disaster to enable it to become a key element within any long-term human recovery plan and within the overall advancement of our state.

The Recovery Corps cannot do any of this, however, without relying upon its guiding principles. The Recovery Corps is committed to accountability, transparency, and alignment.

The Recovery Corps demands accountability within all aspects of its operations. Whether it's dealing with partner agencies, designing outcome-based programs, or demanding accountabilities from those who receive services from the Recovery Corps, the Recovery Corps believes in accountability at every level of government, as government has the ultimate responsibility to be accountable to those it serves. But the people who receive services and resources from the government have the responsibility to also be accountable for the resources and assistance they have received. In the end, by having reciprocal accountabilities in place, resources provided by taxpayers can be tracked and outcomes can be measured, thus helping to eliminate waste and ensuring that public resources only go to those willing to help themselves and be responsbile for what they have received.

The Recovery Corps will continue to demand accountability at all levels of government -- federal, state, and local -- not only by asking those who make political promises to make good on those pledges but also by seeking to ensure that proper structures and mechanisms designed to deliver accountability are in place within governmental programs that provide for our citizens.

Like government accountability, transparency within government agencies and those performing governmental functions becomes an essential philosophy when disaster strikes. Not only must impacted citizens be able to see governmental officials working on their behalf, they must also be able to trust what those governmental officials are saying and rely on their word when trying to make critical decisions related to their own survival and, ultimately, recovery.

As billions of dollars of public and private funds are shifted to the impacted region following a catastrophic event, specific allocations will be made to solve specific problems and alleviate specific situations. It is critical that these resources remain transparent and are utilized for their intended purposes, as future planning is likely being derived based on those resources being disbursed into the impacted region as intended.

But governmental transparency is not just an issue that arises during disasters. In America, a growing sentiment around transparency and the right to know exactly how government resources are being expended to prop up various portions of the economic sector has captivated the mainstream public's consciousness.

As it relates to alignment, the need seems obvious. If governmental agencies are not aligned, there can not be intelligent interaction among them. And without each agency knowing and understanding the work of other agencies, it is likely that services and programs will be duplicated, thus leading to a waste of resources and taxpayer dollars.

This concept becomes even more essential during times of emergency. If agencies are not aligned, little interaction can take place at a time when communication should be at its peak performance. When impacted families or individuals seek services or resources from various state agencies that have no idea about the services or resources provided by their fellow agencies, confusion can abound at a time when anxiety levels are already spiked. Further, an unaligned governmental system likely will be unable to know which citizens have received which resources, which citizens have received duplicate resources, and which citizens still remain to be served.

This very situation happened in Louisiana in the wake of hurricanes Katrina and Rita when the state could not accurately determine which of its citizens needed services, which of its citizens received services, or where citizens still seeking services resided. But this is not only a situation isolated within the state government. The federal government also displayed extreme difficulties in locating people within its programs, determining the needs of those people within the various federal programs, and determining the whereabouts of people within the program, those who have been transitioned out of the program, and those who were deemed ineligible from the program.

In addition to alignment within the governmental sector, it is important for the government sector to be aligned with the non-profit and private sectors in order to most efficiently and effectively serve the public during times of emergency. This means that each level of government (national, state, and local) must align itself with the non-profit sector and the private sector so that key services and resources can be distributed to an impacted area during and after an emergency or disaster.

For example, if the federal government does its job perfectly but the state government in an impacted area is not ready to receive or distribute federal resources, the initiative is a failure. Further, if the federal and state governments do their jobs perfectly but the local governments cannot receive or disburse resources properly, again the entire system is a failure. This failure will also occur should the non-profit sector not be aligned within the system or the private sector not be aligned within the system.

As noted, part of the Recovery Corps’ charge as described in Act 313 is to coordinate long-term human recovery in the wake of man-made disasters. These man-made disasters include a severe shortage of affordable housing for low-income individuals, generational poverty, broken social systems, limited access to healthcare, poor public education, poorly-funded higher education, ineffective criminal justice, and top college graduates leaving the state for better opportunities elsewhere.

These man-made disasters create daily disasters in the lives of thousands of Louisianians. They are generational in nature and are more likely to affect those families and individuals who are already in a vulnerable state. Couple that already vulnerable state with the impact of a catastrophic event and the result is likely to be a humanitarian crisis that is extremely difficult for those families and individuals to overcome.

This is the reason that the Recovery Corps is so concerned with these man-made disasters. If these specific issues can be addressed and corrected, though we know that will take many decades to complete, it is much more likely that families and individuals impacted by disaster will be able to bounce back and not have to endure the extreme recovery associated with those already in a vulnerable state when disaster strikes.

Therefore, when advocating and planning for long-term human recovery, the Recovery Corps will certainly focus on those issues that directly and immediately impact those families and individuals left in the wake. But we will also look to overcome and correct those social issues that work against recovery. That is the only way REAL long-term human recovery will be advanced.