Empowering communities to preserve the timeless heritage of the past and ensure that it is a vibrant part of the present is at the heart of our mission at Global Heritage Fund. I have often witnessed firsthand the importance of involving communities to make our work successful. When I recently visited the traditional granaries of Morocco to inaugurate one of our newest projects, I made sure to meet with local people in the area. I was struck by the zeal these communities felt for their cultural heritage.

Their enthusiasm wasn’t just for the jobs our project will bring. Reinvesting in the ancestral bonds between person and place awoke in these communities a new appreciation of their past as more than a collection of artifacts. They saw how their past could be a useful, enriching part of their lived present.

But community development can serve more than these needs.

Good to have in easy times, community resilience is all the more important when times are hard. For when disaster strikes, it does not strike singly. A resilient community rises up and sacrifices for its members, and each person does his or her part to protect the integrity of the whole. Communities suffer less and recover faster when their members are invested in their homes and in each other.

Tomorrow will be the International Day for Disaster Reduction. Proclaimed by the United Nations in 1989 to “promote a global culture of risk-awareness and disaster reduction,” it raises awareness of the impact disasters have on communities and seeks to spur the adoption of effective policies that can make communities more resilient and thus healthier economically, socially, and culturally.

Here at GHF, we couldn’t agree more with these goals. Especially with the recent fire that destroyed Brazil’s 200-year-old National Museum, disaster prevention is at the forefront of many minds.

Disasters are not always short-lived events. There are places throughout the world that have been responding to disasters for years. Take the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), where warfare has created a massive refugee disaster, caused hundreds of thousands of deaths, and destroyed priceless cultural sites such as Palmyra.

Our work can’t end wars. But we can help communities respond to crises and preserve their cultural heritage for future recovery. To improve community resilience, we are creating tools such as AMAL in Heritage. AMAL is an emergency management program for cultural heritage. It is supported by an app designed to prepare community members on how to safely and reliably respond, and recover from damage caused to historic sites and buildings, or artifacts.

Transforming cultural heritage into an asset that supports and revitalizes communities, giving them purpose and pride even in times of wrenching loss, is the highest goal of AMAL and of our organization. Building strong institutions around cultural heritage creates a cascading effect as people become more connected to each other and the community becomes more deeply rooted in its place. Disasters, seemingly so permanent, eventually become temporary blips on the long continuous stream of communal integrity.

As supporters of our mission to safeguard the world’s most vulnerable places, your support is invaluable for making this a reality. Please forward this email to your friends and family and SHARE your thoughts on social media.

Together, we can stand up for communities around the world and provide the tools they need to safeguard their priceless cultural heritage.

Warmly,

Stefaan Poortman
Chief Executive Officer
Global Heritage Fund