Beyond disaster response: Hurricane Melissa and Jamaica’s resilience challenge

Zahra Henry, ZLH Careers

L to R: Robyn LLoyd (Robyn Kiira Foundation), Decoda Davis (Centred Scribe), Samantha Truman (True People), Zahra Henry (ZLH Careers) and Safiya Bird-Mears (Behind the Brand JA) packaging hurricane relief supplies

In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Melissa, the focus was rightly on disaster relief. Communities needed urgent support. Government agencies, private companies, community groups, volunteers, donors, and diaspora networks moved quickly to respond, often under difficult conditions and with incomplete information. In those early days, speed mattered.  Matching the right actors to the right needs mattered. Operating capacity mattered.

ZLH participated in some early ecosystem reconnaissance during that period, helping to map emerging needs, response actors, and possible areas for coordinated support. That immediate work was useful, but it represented only one phase of a much longer process.

A more useful question is not simply how Jamaica responded, but what Hurricane Melissa revealed about resilience, recovery, and the systems required to rebuild well.

Beyond the immediate response: what rebuilding actually requires

Emergency response and long-term rebuilding are related, but they are not the same challenge.

As a Small Island Developing State (SIDS), Jamaica’s vulnerability to climate shocks sits within a wider development reality, one that affects infrastructure, livelihoods, institutions, local economies, and the long-term resilience of communities and businesses alike. Extreme weather events are humanitarian events, certainly, but they are also economic, institutional, and strategic ones.

That distinction matters because relief efforts, by design, focus on urgency. Rebuilding asks different questions. It requires coordination over longer time horizons, clearer role definition between actors, stronger financing pathways, and practical decisions about what should be restored, strengthened, or redesigned.

One of the more encouraging aspects of Hurricane Melissa’s immediate aftermath was the willingness of different actors to step in quickly. Less visible, but arguably more consequential, is what happens once that first phase passes.

Resilience depends on systems, not goodwill alone

Disasters often bring out remarkable generosity. People donate. Businesses contribute supplies. Volunteers mobilise. Community leaders coordinate local support. Institutions reorient resources where they can. That willingness to help is important, and in many contexts, indispensable.

But goodwill alone does not create resilience. It depends on systems that can absorb pressure, coordinate action, manage information, reduce duplication, and sustain momentum after the initial urgency fades. It depends on institutions that can work across sectors, partnerships that extend beyond symbolic collaboration, and organisations with enough operational clarity to contribute effectively rather than simply react.

This is where ecosystem thinking becomes useful. When communities are affected, the question is rarely whether help exists somewhere in the system. The harder question is whether the wider ecosystem is organised well enough for that help to translate into meaningful outcomes over time.

Public-private partnerships often look more practical than formal

Public-private partnerships are often discussed in highly formal terms, usually in relation to infrastructure, procurement, or long-term concession agreements. In practice, collaboration between sectors is often far less rigid than that.

Hurricane Melissa offered a practical reminder that partnerships can take many forms: private sector logistics supporting public needs, community organisations bridging last-mile delivery gaps, institutions convening stakeholders, or businesses contributing operational capacity where it is needed most.

That broader understanding of partnership matters, particularly in Caribbean contexts where relationships, practical coordination, and trusted intermediaries often shape outcomes as much as formal structures do. We explored this from a wider economic development perspective in our piece on public-private partnerships in the Caribbean, particularly the idea that partnership effectiveness often depends less on terminology and more on how incentives, capacity, and execution align in practice.

The same principle applies beyond disasters. Resilience-building, economic development, entrepreneurship support, and community recovery all depend, in different ways, on the ability of actors across sectors to work together meaningfully.

When small businesses rebuild, the nation recovers

Disaster conversations understandably focus first on households, communities, and physical infrastructure. But business recovery deserves equal attention, particularly in economies where small enterprises play such a significant structural role.

According to the Jamaica Information Service, MSMEs account for roughly 44% of Jamaica’s GDP and between 60% and 85% of employment. In practical terms, that means disruption to small businesses is not a side issue in national recovery. It is part of the wider rebuilding challenge.

For some businesses, the impact of a disaster may be immediate and visible: damaged premises, interrupted operations, lost stock, supply chain disruption, reduced customer demand, staffing challenges, or cash flow strain. For smaller or informal enterprises operating with thinner buffers, recovery can be even more difficult.

This is where resilience becomes more than a public-sector conversation.

For business owners, preparedness is closely tied to operational clarity, continuity planning, financial discipline, and the broader strategic decisions that shape how well an enterprise can absorb disruption. Our work on strategic planning touches some of these themes from a business continuity and execution perspective, even outside crisis contexts.

Small business resilience is, in many respects, part of national resilience.

Preparedness is more than emergency planning

Preparedness is often interpreted narrowly, particularly in disaster contexts.

The term tends to bring to mind contingency protocols, emergency kits, drills, evacuation plans, and response frameworks. Those are important, but they are only part of the picture.

For many organisations, preparedness is also about quieter strategic work that happens long before crisis emerges: building internal capacity, clarifying roles, developing stronger programmes, cultivating delivery partnerships, improving operational readiness, and creating the organisational coherence needed to mobilise resources effectively.

That applies just as much to foundations, NGOs, social enterprises, and community initiatives as it does to businesses or public agencies.

In practice, many organisations work backwards. A funding opportunity appears, and the scramble begins to shape an idea around available money. More resilient organisations tend to approach this differently. They invest earlier in programme thinking, partnership development, operational clarity, and strategic positioning, which makes it easier to assess whether a funding, sponsorship, or collaboration opportunity is genuinely aligned.

This is one reason why effective resource mobilisation is rarely just about writing proposals. As we discuss in our grant writing article, stronger applications are usually a reflection of stronger underlying thinking.

Disaster relief is swift, but resilience requires endurance

Relief efforts are designed for speed. That is their purpose. Resilience-building operates on a different timetable.

It requires longer-term coordination between institutions, businesses, communities, funders, and implementation partners. It asks more of leadership, governance, financing systems, programme design, and operational discipline. It is often slower, less visible, and harder to sustain once public attention shifts elsewhere.

That does not make relief less important. It simply reflects the reality that immediate response and long-term resilience require different forms of effort.

For Jamaica, Hurricane Melissa was not only a disaster response event. It was also a useful reminder of the wider resilience questions facing climate-vulnerable Caribbean economies, particularly those navigating the intersecting pressures of infrastructure risk, economic fragility, MSME vulnerability, and constrained public resources.

For organisations thinking about community resilience, entrepreneurship support, strategic partnerships, programme development, or resource mobilisation, those questions are not theoretical.

If your business, institution, foundation, or initiative is thinking through resilience-building, recovery programming, partnership design, or strategic funding pathways, you are welcome to book a conversation here.

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