In August 2017, Hurricane Harvey struck Houston, Texas, causing billions of dollars in damage, and upending millions of lives. That summer, our founder John Marinelli—an eighth-grade history teacher at the time—partnered with fellow educators to turn local schools into hubs for disaster relief. Together, they mobilized trusted networks of teachers and community leaders to provide essential supplies to students and their families.
Today, we aim to expand this local effort into a national initiative. Recognizing that those closest to an emergency are best equipped to lead recovery efforts, we launched the Disaster Resilience and Response Network to empower communities in crisis.
