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Objective: Individuals leading nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) often lack adequate training to best serve their communities' needs during disaster recovery even as they are often tasked with filling in gaps left by governmental and private resources. Thus, it is essential that education and training initiatives address NGO efforts specifically. This paper identifies training and education needs as proffered by organizational representatives that have themselves been involved in long-term recovery efforts following disasters in the past 10 years across Texas., Design, Setting, and Subjects: Qualitative interviews with nearly 100 local NGO representatives, government officials, and regional and state-level NGO representatives were conducted using purposive and snowball sampling. The participants conducted recovery activities in six different locations in Texas since 2008., Results: Many respondents noted that they had little experience in disaster recovery and a lack of understanding of what recovery involved. Interviewees identified needs for training including how to coordinate recovery tasks among multiple organizations and agencies (eg, who to involve, what skillsets are needed, what group structure should be formed), how to distribute financial and nonfinancial resources (eg, how to prioritize needs, how to distribute funds, who should receive funding), and how to manage media and external organizational attention., Conclusion: This paper provides recommendations for augmenting existing NGO training and educational activities and developing new training schemes offering practical advice from recovery leaders who have been on the frontline of recent disasters.

This document introduces a special issue of the International Journal of Disaster Risk Science that focuses on promoting the engagement of older adults in disaster settings. It acknowledges the challenges posed by increasing extreme events and an aging population, as well as the disproportionate impact of disasters on older adults. The special issue includes articles that explore older adults' contributions to the entire disaster cycle, including insights from various disasters such as COVID-19. It also features research from Canada, which can be a valuable reference for international efforts. The document concludes by highlighting the methodological advancements in engaging older adults in disaster-related efforts. The authors express gratitude to the organizations that funded the research. [Extracted from the article]

College students are a unique population occupying a distinct life-course and transition period between adolescence and adulthood. Although not monolithic in experiences, knowledge, and demographics, this diverse population is particularly susceptible to immediate, short-term, mid-term, and long-term disaster impacts. Recently, disaster research focusing on college students has rightly focused on the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Although the pandemic was a public health disaster interrupting social, developmental, and educational processes for students on a global scale, the climate crisis and related environmental disasters continuously threaten college students' individual development, health, and well-being. Thus, it is critical to understand current knowledge focusing on environmental disasters and college students in order to determine future research needs. This article used the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) approach to examine research on college students and disasters over the past ten years (2014–2023). We identified 67 articles, which we analyzed through a mixed methods approach, including descriptive statistics and thematic analysis. Results indicate that disaster impacts on college students are an understudied topic in the social sciences, especially in an era of more-frequent and -intense environmental hazards. Our findings demonstrate a need to engage college students in disaster research worldwide so that trade schools, colleges, and universities can collaborate with policymakers to build this unique and disproportionately impacted population's capacity to mitigate against, respond to, and recover from environmental hazards in an ever-changing climate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most scholarship on volunteer motivation examines everyday scenarios rather than disaster or emergency contexts. Environmental hazards and their devastating social impacts continue to grow in severity and frequency, creating an increased opportunity for disaster-related volunteerism. Disaster volunteerism diverges from traditional volunteerism in location, timing, activities, and risk. Thus, examining what motivates people to volunteer during disasters is critical. Using interviews and observational data from ethnographic work with civilian volunteer search and rescue (SAR) organizations, this study examined what motivations compelled their volunteers to action. Findings showed that volunteers had similar motivations to the functional perspective on volunteer motivations in everyday contexts, while also uniquely supporting the disaster volunteer sector. Further, findings pointed to an additional motivational concept for external rewards and shifting narratives that operated in a cyclical nature to motivate volunteers within their respective SAR organizations. Combined, these insights offer support for previous research and provide evidence that there are unique factors that may play a critical role in volunteer motivation in disaster settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]