Organizational profile - Essay Example

FEMA – Organization Profile The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was created on April 1979 for serving the whole of American community –the population at large in distress from natural calamities and hazards of all kinds. It is a government organization, whose mission is to help the American citizens by taking initiative on its own to collectively create, maintain, and better its strengths for protecting its people belonging to all communities from different natural or man-made unforeseen calamities and acts of terrorism.

FEMA coordinates government’s role of helping communities in distress from all domestic calamities (FEMA, 2013).The Congress’ purpose behind the organization of FEMA is to work systematically by providing needed help to state and local governments in fulfilling their responsibilities toward the communities in distress. FEMA helps in making comprehensive disaster management plans. Different government agencies vide Executive Order 12127 were merged by the then President, Jimmy Carter in 1979 to perform different disaster management functions.

The agencies absorbed in FEMA included the Federal Insurance Administration, the National Fire Prevention and Control Administration, the National Weather Service Community Preparedness Program, the Federal Preparedness Agency of the General Services Administration, the Federal Disaster Assistance Administration activities from HUD, and Civil defence responsibilities were also shifted to the new agency from the Defence Departments Defence Civil Preparedness Agency (FEMA, 2013).FEMA Corps, yet another partnership between FEMA and the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) was formed on March 13, 2012 by the White House with FEMA dedicated staff strength of 1,600 corps members within AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps (NCCC), singularly for disaster readiness, action, and loss recovery (FEMA, 2013).

The social initiative of this partnership is to boost the government’s disaster management calibre, heighten the dependability and variance of the disaster workforce, encourage the morality of service, widen education and economic uplifting of the adult population, and attain major cost-efficiencies for the American tax-payer. This program at its total functionality in an average disaster year provides a tax-saving of nearly $60 million a year (FEMA, 2013).When it comes to moral or ethical effects of FEMA’s social initiatives, the workforce focuses more on vulnerable communities – the poor and the marginalized who are at a greater risk of death from the catastrophe relatively to the rich and middle-class people.

In this regard, certain factors make communities more prone to risks, such as race, age, gender, disability, illiteracy, domestic violence, homelessness, language hurdles, income differences, drug addiction, and immigrant status etc. Present social inequities make communities more risk-prone to disaster effects, thereby creating situations that turn disaster into catastrophe.The ethical level of catastrophe preparedness and action is complex and takes inputs from many sources. Catastrophes are relatively prone to create moral complexities than many other happenings.

There are various laws, covenants, codes and contracts that stipulate adherence to human rights irrespective of the happening. FEMA emergency managers need to be extra-alert of ethical considerations of all decisions they take for the welfare of communities.ReferenceFEMA. (2013). About FEMA. U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Retrieved from http://www.fema.gov/about-agency