UMass Boston Conference: Rebuilding Sustainable Communities for Children and their Families After Disasters
From Sunday, November 16 through Wednesday, November 19, The University of Massachusetts Boston will be hosting the inaugural event of the Center for Rebuilding Sustainable Communities after Disasters, a working conference in which international experts from the public, private, and NGO sectors will come together and share ideas, strategies, and experiences from their work in helping to rebuild communities that have suffered from natural and man-made disasters.
The conference will focus on four main objectives:
- The role of gender equality in alleviating poverty and assisting children, their families and their communities after disasters;
- The status of children and women in various communities after disasters and the continuing need for superior research and appropriate data;
- The roles of governments, the private sector, and non-governmental organizations; and,
- The promotion of human dignity in the creation of sustainable environments that empower families in the aftermath of disasters.
Through plenary sessions, keynote speeches, paper presentations, and panel sessions, the conference will seek to contribute to, and recommend, future policy formulation and implementation processes by local, regional and national governments as well as multilateral agencies and grass-roots organizations. The goal of these efforts is to bring specialists from various disciplines (health, education, community planning, etc.) to explore and make recommendations on how to reconstruct sustainable communities that will be safe for children and their families after disasters.
For media inquiries, contact DeWayne Lehman at 617-287-5302 or by email at dewayne.lehman@umb.edu, or Will Kilburn at 617-287-5317 or by email at will.kilburn@umb.edu.
For information about the conference including times, locations on campus, and agendas, go to www.rebuilding.umb.edu/rsccfd.
# # #
About the Center for Rebuilding Sustainable Communities for Children and their Families after Disasters
The primary purpose of the Center for Rebuilding Sustainable Communities after Disasters (CRSCAD), part of the John W. McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies, is to work in close collaboration with practitioners, academics, researchers, policy makers and grassroots organizations in the United States of America and in all the continents of the world in their search for the most appropriate and sustainable ways to rebuild their communities after disasters (both natural and man-made). Examples of man-made disasters would include bad governance and poverty, environmental pollution, AIDS, wars, and conflicts. The Center engages in academic, service and consultancy activities. For more information, go to www.rebuilding.umb.edu.
About UMass Boston
Established in 1964, UMass Boston prides itself on providing challenging teaching, distinguished research, and extensive public service to Boston and the Commonwealth. Through its six colleges—Liberal Arts, Science and Mathematics, Management, Nursing and Health Sciences, Public and Community Service, and Graduate College of Education –the McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies, and the Division of Corporate, Continuing, and Distance Education, UMass Boston offers undergraduate and graduate study to 14,100 students in more than 150 fields. For more information, please see www.umb.edu.