Make Hay While the Sun Shines: How Community Organizations Help Refugees in Preparation for Disasters

Abstract

This article examines community-based nonprofit organizations' (CBOs') perspectives and practices regarding cultivating refugees' disaster resilience. Adopting the theoretical framework of structural and cognitive social capital, we conducted in-depth interviews with leaders, staff members, and volunteers from refugee-serving organizations. The research findings offer new insights into how CBOs help refugees obtain multiple forms of social capital and develop disaster resilience through education and training, resource mobilization, planning, and coordination. The research findings also reveal the flow of social capital exchange during the disaster resilience cultivation process. Similar CBOs can rely on our research findings to develop evidence-based programs and interventions to help culturally and linguistically diverse groups gain social capital and improve disaster resilience.