Page 154 - Creating Spiritual and Psychological Resilience

Working as an Ally to Underserved Communities 123

At each twist and turn of 9/11 recovery, faith communities continued
to rise to the call to serve the community. The NYC 9/11 Unmet Needs
Roundtable adapted and responded to the needs of diverse communi-
ties. Case management and cash assistance through the NYC 9/11 Unmet
Needs Roundtable moved from emergency assistance for communities
being excluded from aid, to funding mental health assistance for people
as other sources for mental healthcare closed their doors, to responding
to the needs of WTC recovery workers who were emerging with new ill-
nesses and who could be facing life-long or life-threatening illnesses.
The NYC 9/11 Unmet Needs Roundtable closed officially in May 2009.
Closing the doors of the 9/11 Roundtable was not an indication that there
was no longer a need. Indeed, NYDIS made valiant attempts to recre-
ate some of the systems that had been available to early 9/11 victims so
that the World Trade Center recovery workers could have equal access to
care. In the end, resources had dwindled. But what NYDIS and the 9/11
Roundtable did was, and is, imperative for all spiritual care and mental
healthcare workers: To be present with people for as long as possible, to
simply be present; to acknowledge the pain of the community and, if pos-
sible, to shoulder some of the burden.
In the end, it is the community that is ultimately responsible for its
recovery and the recovery of its most vulnerable members. NYDIS and
the 9/11 Roundtable helped build and sustain the 9/11 human services
community. Along the way, sophisticated tools for managing and adapt-
ing unmet needs-tables were developed that will hopefully be looked to as
models in future disaster recovery efforts.

Conclusion

The adaptation of the unmet needs table concept to the unique needs
of 9/11 victims who were economically and psychologically impacted
but who had not lost physical property was yet another innovation of
the World Trade Center disaster recovery effort. Before 9/11, unmet
needs tables were a tool, often developed by Church World Service and
UMCOR, to support the management of need-based, long-term recov-
ery assistance with a focus on structured support in the rebuilding of
homes and to replace the basic needs of families that have suffered mate-
rial loss in a natural disaster. Although faith communities often use these
tables as a way to coordinate the distribution of aid in a nonduplicative,
case-by-case and need-based fashion, at the time of its inception in April