What health justice organizations are seeing—and what it means for philanthropy
September 2026
In February, a winter storm left tens of thousands of people across Middle Tennessee without power. For Elmahaba Center, a Nashville organization serving Arabic-speaking immigrants, refugees, their children, and anyone who asks for help, the crisis quickly became about more than power outages.
The storm exposed how difficult it can be for people to get help when disaster response systems aren’t built with their communities in mind.
People were losing the food in their refrigerators and worrying about rent after missing work. Families were trying to navigate relief programs in English. For Arabic-speaking residents, options for getting information, applying for assistance, or following up with someone in their own language were limited.
Elmahaba Center was often the bridge.
For example, when community members needed rental assistance, some organizations were directing people to communicate by email in English. Elmahaba pushed for a different approach: phone calls and texts in Arabic with a professional bilingual caseworker.
The issue wasn’t that people didn’t need help or that funding wasn’t available. The system for getting that help to people wasn’t accessible.
At the same time, Elmahaba was helping facilitate mutual aid between neighbors—people sharing food, resources, information, and whatever else they could.
We spoke with Elmahaba in the immediate aftermath of the storm. In the video below, the organization describes what its community was experiencing and why the response mattered as much as the storm itself.
Six months later, what has changed?
We checked back in with Elmahaba this August.
There has been some progress. United Way has made changes to its practices, including around language access. But Elmahaba is clear that this doesn’t solve the larger problem.
United Way can help distribute resources, but it isn’t Nashville’s emergency response system. It isn’t responsible for the city’s transportation, infrastructure, social services, or disaster communications.
Those are government responsibilities.
And according to Elmahaba, there has still been little accountability for what happened during the storm—from inaccessible buses and inadequate support for unhoused residents to the failure to communicate effectively with residents in multiple languages.
For Arabic-speaking Nashvillians, language access remains a basic question of whether government is actually reaching the people it is supposed to serve.
If residents can’t get information in a language they understand, they can’t access the help that’s available to them.
Community organizations shouldn’t have to solve that after a disaster has already happened.
A disaster doesn’t create every problem. It exposes the ones that are already there.
This is perhaps the biggest lesson Elmahaba took from the storm.
Natural disasters force communities to quickly figure out who has information, who has resources, who can get around, who can communicate with government, and who can help their neighbors.
They also show where existing systems are failing.
For Elmahaba, that means the work can’t stop at disaster relief. The organization is calling for policy changes that would make Nashville more responsive before the next crisis—including better data about the city’s MENA communities, stronger language access, and greater participation from communities that are often left out of government decision-making.
It also means recognizing the people who are already doing this work.
Elmahaba’s approach is straightforward: “offer what one can for a neighbor and move with an abundance mindset.”
That could mean giving money. Giving time. Translating for a neighbor. Helping someone find resources. Making sure someone has food. Connecting someone to an organization that can help.
What can you do?
If you want to support the work happening in Nashville, Elmahaba recommends:
Support local advocacy
- Nashville People Power — community advocates who first reported the shortage of line workers during Winter Storm Fern
- Nashville Community Safety Network
Donate resources
Support local wealth redistribution
And start with your own neighbors.
Elmahaba is calling attention to an important part of Nashville’s political landscape: many people who are directly affected by decisions about housing, infrastructure, public services, and disaster response do not have the right to vote.
If you do, use your vote. Pay attention to local leadership and the policies and budgets that determine how Nashville prepares for and responds to crises.
What can philanthropy do?
For funders, the lesson is equally direct.
Don’t wait until a disaster happens to figure out who has relationships with the community.
Fund the organizations that already have those relationships. Build language access into disaster preparedness and grantmaking from the beginning. Make funding flexible enough for community organizations to respond in the ways their communities actually need—not according to systems designed somewhere else.
And listen to the organizations telling you where those systems aren’t working.
Elmahaba’s experience after the ice storm makes the point clearly: people shouldn’t have to fight the relief system to receive relief.
The next disaster will come. The question is whether Nashville—and the organizations and funders supporting its communities—will be better prepared to reach everyone when it does.
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