The world’s poorest people are the most vulnerable to natural disasters, war, famine, and outbreaks of disease.

We are currently responding to emergencies all around the world – read below for more information about each situation.

Whether it’s a man-made or natural disaster, just after the emergency has occurred we provide food, shelter, clean water, sanitation facilities, medical care, tools, and seeds to the people who need it most.

Visit CARE’s Disaster Response Depot to see how we stock warehouses around the world to help us respond fast when disaster hits. Funds raised will help restock our Brisbane warehouse with items like blankets, water purification tablets, shelter kits, and much more to help us immediately respond when a disaster strikes.

We continue to help people rebuild their lives and restore their livelihoods in the years following the event. We also work in disaster risk reduction, working with communities to help them prepare and plan for emergencies, and work specifically with women who are disproportionately affected by emergencies.

Quarterly Emergencies Overview

As of September 2019 – CARE reached 6 M People (6%) of the 101 M affected people in 8 large-scale crises.

Help us save lives before, during and after a disaster

When a disaster or emergency strikes, CARE is ready to help. Make a donation now to our Global Emergency Fund to support our emergency responses, or make a monthly donation to our Emergency Response Team so we are always ready to respond at a moment’s notice.

Donations to support our emergency responses are always needed long after the initial lifesaving work has been done. As the months, and even years go on, the focus shifts to long-term recovery efforts. You can read about our ongoing work responding to:

• Protecting and rebuilding lives affected by the Syrian crisis
• Cyclone Gita in Tonga
• the 2018 earthquake in Papua New Guinea
• the Boxing Day tsunami in Asia

Gender Equality and Emergencies

In poor communities, natural disasters disproportionately affect women. On average, more women die during and shortly after disasters than men because:

• Women are likely to rescue their children over themselves and are less likely to know how to swim or climb their way to safety.
• In the aftermath of disasters, women typically have less cash savings, lower levels of education, and smaller social networks to draw upon than men, consequently suffering more from the impact.

As women usually have the role of collecting firewood and water, tending vegetable gardens, preparing meals, and circulating information, they also play a crucial role in reducing the impact of natural disasters on their community.

During emergencies, women have specific needs, but often don’t have the chance to speak openly. Yet research and experience show that when women’s needs are met, families and whole communities benefit.

‘Sometimes women make up seventy-five per cent of the population in a refugee camp, so if we aren’t talking to them we are not going to meet the needs of the majority of the population.’ Isadora Quay, CARE’s Gender in Emergencies Advisor

That’s why, during crises, CARE works to raise awareness on gender-based violence, providing support services that cater specifically to women and their families. We create community spaces where women can meet to discuss issues and work to ensure that relief efforts take women’s needs into account.

Find out more about CARE’s gender in emergencies work by reading our “Adversity and opportunity: Gender relations, emergencies and resilience in the Horn of Africa” report. Download the eight-page summary or download the full report.

Disaster Risk Reduction

We’re working with communities to help them prepare and plan for emergencies. For example, in the low-lying islands of Vanuatu, we are helping communities develop evacuation plans in the event of a tsunami or cyclone. This helps ensure communities are equipped to both respond to and survive emergencies, both now and in the future.

For many communities, this means building resilience against climate change. We’re working with local communities to reduce the impacts of climate change through activities such as adapted farming methods and growing drought-resistant crops.

We’re also helping communities to rebuild after disasters by building stronger homes in safer places, with access to sustainable livelihoods, health, and social services. This helps ensure the protection of communities from any dangers they may face while reducing future disaster risk.