Public-private effort brings Harvey relief
Saturday was a big day for the small South Texas town of Ingleside: It was opening day of Little League season.
Located between Corpus Christi and Rockport, Ingleside was hard hit by Hurricane Harvey. One of the community’s most prized assets — the Little League field — was destroyed beyond repair. Up until a month ago, the community was facing the fact that the entire season would be canceled or significantly delayed. For the 500 kids who play in the league and their families, this would have dealt yet another blow to a community already in pain.
The city of Ingleside has been on a determined path to ensure the Little League season proceeded as scheduled. As part of that effort, the Rebuild Texas Fund approved a grant earlier this month to support the city’s efforts to build a new field. Our funding, combined with other funding that the city has secured from local and regional partners, will go toward building dugouts, fences, lights and scoreboards, and ensure that the field is up and running in time for opening day.
Ingleside Little League is just one of 50 projects, and part of the $15 million that the Rebuild Texas Fund has distributed to date. The Rebuild Texas Fund launched just four days after made landfall. The fund, a collaboration between the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation and the OneStar Foundation, set a target to raise $100 million, seeded with a personal gift of $36 million from Michael and Susan Dell. Today, thanks to the support from over 32,000 individual and corporate donors that have answered the call — from across Texas and around the world — the Rebuild Texas Fund is $93.1 million strong.
It’s been six months since Harvey made landfall on that fateful evening in Rockport. What we’ve observed and learned over that time has humbled us and helped inform how we shape the next phase of our journey in partnership with communities.
We are seeing that communities are getting stronger and more organized. The first few months were characterized by shock and trying to recover — that meant mucking, gutting and clearing debris from streets to make homes, schools or businesses habitable again. What we are seeing now is communities becoming more organized and working together. They are leveraging their long-term recovery groups, extension agents and other resources.
We are seeing funders and invested stakeholders coming together to collaborate more. As Rebuild Texas Fund, we recognize that $100 million, although a large amount in absolute terms, represents less than .5 percent of the damage wrecked by Harvey, which is estimated to exceed $150 billion. To make a meaningful dent in the rebuild and recovery process, we cannot go it alone. We need to collaborate with partners — federal, state and local publicsector agencies, big and small business, non-profits, philanthropists. We want to work with anyone who wishes to contribute to the recovery in these communities — whether it’s capital, competency, network, resources or expertise.
There is really no substitute for being on the ground in the affected communities. The scale and reach of Hurricane Harvey was unprecedented. Outside of Houston, more than 40 counties were hit, covering 300 miles of coastline, impacting 200,000 homes, two million residents and 500 school campuses. Our team has been immersed in affected communities, clocking almost 15,000 miles to meet with community leaders, families, business leaders, elected officials and non-profits, almost on a weekly basis, to develop the best response. It is important that our funding strategies and decisions are communityled, informed by our own experiences on the ground and undertaken in collaboration with local leaders and key community stakeholders.
Which brings us back to Ingleside. When we started, we did not know that we would be funding Little League fields. However, if you speak to the 10,000 residents of Ingleside, and the 500 kids gearing up for the season, it symbolizes hope and a return to normalcy in an otherwise devastated community. For our part, we will continue to return to Ingleside and communities in all 41 affected counties, celebrate each incremental milestone and work together to rebuild and revitalize this great state.
Our donors, government partners, grantee organizations, volunteers, and neighbors in need have come together to make headway — home by home, classroom by classroom, business by business. Many challenges lie ahead as communities continue on the path to recovery but these last six months on the ground have taught us one fundamental lesson: We’re in it together.