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PHILANTHROPY NEWS DIGEST
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| Name: | GeoHazards International |
| Founded: | 1991 |
| President: | Brian E. Tucker |
| Address: | 200 Town and Country Village, Palo Alto, CA 94301 |
| Phone: | 650.614.9050 |
| Fax: | 650.614.9051 |
| E-mail: | info@geohaz.org |
| URL: | http://www.geohaz.org/ |
| Mission: | To reduce death and suffering caused by earthquakes in the world's most vulnerable communities through earthquake risk management and promoting hazard awareness. |
| Background: | GeoHazards International (GHI) was founded in 1991 and achieved non-profit status in 1993. Its pilot project in Quito, Ecuador, in 1992 assessed that city's earthquake risk and used seismic scenarios to develop self-sustaining programs to reduce the risk. Following the evaluation, GHI initiated the Quito School Earthquake Safety Project in December 1994 in collaboration with Ecuador's National Polytechnic School and the University of British Columbia. The project evaluated the earthquake risk factor for the city's public schools, designed affordable means of strengthening them, and retrofitted fifteen schools. |
| Current Program: | GHI's current programs include the Global Earthquake Safety Initiative, a risk-assessment project involving cities around the world that encourages municipal governments in earthquake-prone regions to compare their vulnerability and emergency response capabilities. Armed with this information, city officials and international aid organizations can pinpoint needs and difficiencies and work toward improving them. The Global Earthquake Safety Initiative is an expansion of the UN-RADIUS initiative, a project GHI did in collaboration with the United Nations to assess earthquake risk around the world. |
| Recent Successes: | GHI recently completed a project in the Kathmandu Valley of Nepal to raise earthquake awareness in the region, as well as evaluate the safety of approximately 400 schools in the area and retrofit one model school. In the course of the project, GHI and its Nepali partner organization, the National Society of Earthquake Engineers, trained local masons in modern, seismically sound construction techniques. GHI also recently raised awareness of risk in the Mexican cities of Tijuana and Mexicali through various workshops and consultations with city officials. |
| Web Site: | For in-depth information on GHI's projects and philosophy, visit the GeoHazards Web site at http://www.geohaz.org/. Visitors to the site can also use an online form to become a member of the organization. |
| Funding Needs: | GHI's operational costs are funded by the generous contributions of individuals. Contributions go toward daily office expenditures, travel costs, and directly to the communities served by GHI.
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Every week, the "Spotlight" highlights the activities of a different U.S. nonprofit organization; periodically, the spotlight shifts to an NGO in a country other than the U.S. The selection of organizations for the "Spotlight" is based on criteria such as programmatic interests, geographic focus, and size to ensure the broadest possible representation of the nonprofit sector, both in the U.S. and abroad.
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