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Disaster recovery programs and policies are becoming even more important with the increase in numbers and frequencies of disasters and their widespread damage. This special issue examines approaches and recovery methods that have succeeded and identifies common elements. The authors in this volume note several key ingredients including collaboration among agencies providing services to disaster victims, educating residents about potential hazards and how to adequately prepare for them, and developing a coordinated set of public policies that can be communicated. Likewise, engaging in sound community development practices involving interactions among those affected is vital to successful outcomes. Recognizing the key roles that special groups such as the elderly can play in recovery efforts is also important as is building on customs and traditions in developing countries. The research in this volume adds to the literature on disaster recovery approaches and can help policymakers to build local capacity and remediate the impacts of disasters in the future.

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This paper tells the story of an intergroup grant initiative and the neighborhood projects it supported. It highlights the challenges of race and power, in conjunction with other overlapping identities and forms of discrimination. The demographics of the greater Goodland region have changed dramatically over the last few years and decades. The life for traditionally European American and African American communities is being altered by a steady influx of new immigrants from Africa, Asia, and Latin America. This paper discusses a philanthropic community's response to these changes and within this, two specific neighborhood-based responses. The lessons and insights described in this paper, told by the initiative's evaluator and advisory council co-chair, are drawn from five years' of systematic data collection and analysis, focused observations, and the reflections of other participants in the initiative.