Marina Armendariz
AUSTIN — In 2024, the American Red Cross began piloting the Community Adaptation Program (CAP) in Hays County in an effort to help at-risk communities prepare for disasters.
According to the Red Cross, CAP is a temporary collaboration with local partners to enhance their ability to provide increased access to health and mental health services, nutritious food and safe housing for local, underserved families. Once an area has been served for the predetermined length of time, the Red Cross moves to another region that requires aid, though the program aims to leave the communities with the tools necessary to sustain themselves if a disaster were to occur. The two-year program began in Hays County after a needs assessment.
Stephanie Cerda, Red Cross CAP liaison, explained that the extreme weather, paired with the challenging housing situation and high population of Spanish speakers in Hays County, made it a great candidate for the program: “We look at an area's social vulnerability and we also look at their historical propensity for having disasters,” said Cerda. “Hays County was selected because we have wildfires, we’ve had flooding in 2013 and 2015, we’ve had the winter storm, and then, obviously, because we’re in Texas, we contend with extreme heat.”
Following the selection of the region, the CAP team identified several community organizations around the county, such as nonprofits, churches, faith-based organizations and more, that aid in the areas of health, housing and hunger, to receive resources and funding from the program, as, when disaster strikes, these establishments need the most support.
One organization that received assistance was the Central Texas Food Bank (CTFB). According to Anurita Mittra, vice president of network programs and services, the CTFB had already started a community needs assessment in Hays County when the Red Cross reached out.
“It’s an extremely high needs area,” Mittra explained. “There are several factors that go into it. They’ve seen a huge population growth [of approximately] 25% population growth within a span of a very short time. They’ve also seen a loss of agricultural land. The rate of poverty is increasing, [as well as] the rate of food insecurity, [as] one in every six Hays County residents is food insecure.”
According to Mittra, the CTFB, in collaboration with CAP, was able to purchase industrial refrigerators and freezers for the Feeding Futures School Pantry in Camino Real Elementary School. The CTFB also received tents, wagons, gloves and more for a mobile food distribution they recently started at Uhland Elementary School.
“They’ve provided us with those kinds of capacity-building initiatives, which seem small in the larger scale, but when you’re actually doing the work on the ground, it’s pretty incredible to see all of that come together,” said Mittra.
Overall, CAP has collaborated with 16 partners in Hays County, including Abundant Life Christian Church, Barnabas Connection, Central Texas Food Bank, Centro Cultural Hispano de San Marcos, Contigo Wellness Foundation, El Buen Pastor United Methodist Church, Fellowship of the Crossroads Wimberley, H.O.M.E. Center, Hays County Food Bank, Mission Able, Promo Salud, Southside Community Center, VFW Post 12058 and VFW Post 3413. So far, it has provided funding for 14 of them through the Red Cross’ normal donations.
Cerda stated that many people distrust the Red Cross, associating it with the government and military, but by creating and funding trusted partnerships with pre-established community members, more people have access to aid and shelter.
“My hope was to create all these relationships with organizations that, when something happened, you might not go to the Red Cross, but you’re going to go to the church you always go to. You might not go to the Red Cross, but you go to the food pantry that is down the street from you,” she continued.
The Red Cross also began hosting events for its community partners to interact with each other. According to the liaison, these events have already boosted collaboration within Hays County. By connecting these organizations with each other, it fostered a collaborative environment, where the community partners could work together towards common goals.
“We’ve provided a space for people, for organizations that like to get involved in a response to need and they just make the magic happen,” said Cerda. “Because of this, we’re calling it the Hays Resilience Network.”
The Hays Resilience Network is not an official program; it occurred through the organizations themselves coming together, so it is unique in its formation, she said, with each organization adapting and contributing to each other in their own ways.
With one year left in the CAP program, Cerda and the Red Cross hope for further collaboration with its community partners.
For more information about the Community Adaptation Program, visit bit.ly/4khPbFF.
