Thrive RISE (Resilience in Shared Emergencies) is a coalition of Community Organizations Active in Disaster (COAD) for San Mateo County. Thrive RISE enhances community resilience and facilitates communication, coordination, and collaboration among nonprofit and faith-based organizations, government agencies, and the private sector during all phases of a disaster.
Community organizations have crucial roles to play in helping residents safely navigate a disaster. They have place-based knowledge, deep ties to the community, and existing operations focused on community well-being that helps them accurately identify and address local needs during disasters. When these organizations collaborate and communicate during disasters, community outcomes can improve drastically.
Thrive RISE manages a diverse COAD of community- and faith-based organizations with expertise in food security, physical and mental health, housing, education, substance use, and harm reduction, emergency preparedness, climate adaptation, children and youth, senior wellness, LGBTQ+ belonging and services, immigrants rights, violence prevention, environmental health, and other areas related to community resilience and wellbeing. Thrive RISE is made possible with the generous support of Silicon Valley Community Foundation.
What is Thrive’s Role in the COAD?
Thrive helps manage communications, events, program planning, and new partnerships for the COAD so that organization members can prioritize mitigation, preparation, response, and recovery to a disaster. Our nonprofit leaders vary across sectors, and all provide a unique perspective and resources when responding to a disaster. As liasion to the COAD, Thrive ensures that leaders can collaborate with each other to plan for the disaster together, such that when a disaster strikes, the community works together to provide the best and most efficient response. With a dependable COAD in place like Thrive RISE, less time, money, and supplies are wasted during the disaster, thus mitigating the negative impacts on the community.
COAD Meetings
Thrive RISE is excited to be launching our new committee structure in February 2025 from the support of Sequoia Healthcare District! The COAD will have four issue-specific working groups to support disaster planning and risk reduction initiatives in the areas of children and childcare; older adults and Access and Functional Needs (AFN); mental health and spiritual care; and food security.
With the addition of committees meeting on a monthly or bimonthly basis, all COAD member meetings will be on a quarterly basis starting in 2025. Quarterly meetings will be an opportunity for committees to share out updates and collaborate with all COAD members on how to respond to such issues within San Mateo County. Quarterly meetings and COAD trainings will also convene to learn from experts in the field on upcoming disaster preparedness, climate resilience, new scientific advances, and strategies for mitigation.
Interested in joining the COAD or attending any of our meetings? Reach out to cindy@thrivealliance.org for more information.
