Source: Yale Climate Connections

Excerpt:

Stillmeadow Community Fellowship, a church in Baltimore, serves more than people’s spiritual needs. 

Kids go there for help with homework. People have gatherings on the church’s grounds, pick up groceries from the food pantry, and grow veggies in the community garden.

And the church is one of about 20 organizations that have partnered with the city to become resiliency hubs.

“Because they’re seen as trusted, go-to resources daily, you know, it’s a natural fit for them to continue providing services during a hazard event like an extreme heat wave or a flood,” says Aubrey Germ, who runs Baltimore’s community resiliency hub program. 

The city helped Stillmeadow secure grant funding for solar panels and battery storage. So if grid power goes down, people can go to the church to cool off, charge devices, and refrigerate food and medicine.

Read more: Baltimore church becomes an extreme weather ‘resiliency hub’