• Over the last three years, Puerto Rico has been impacted by three major disasters. Two hurricanes and an increase in seismic activity have caused ample losses, which have combined with the consequences of more than a decade of austerity policies to further impoverish and deprive the population from dignified living conditions. While the state has continually failed to address the people’s urgent needs, communities have found a way to coordinate their own survival and, through social impact advocacy, have joined to demand just recovery from the governments of Puerto Rico and the United States.

This webinar will focus on:

• An introduction to the impact of disasters in Puerto Rico, with a focus on historically vulnerable populations and the promise of equitable development for all.
• How are human rights, specifically the right to housing, education and civil liberties, affected by disasters and government (lack of) responses.
• The relationship between limited democracy, austerity, fragile social and economic infrastructure, lack of accessible data and resiliency.
• How social impact advocacy, supported by social-justice-informed philanthropy, can help build power around fair recovery and human rights issues.

Speakers Biographies

Ariadna Godreau Aubert is a human rights lawyer with a JD from the University of Puerto Rico School of Law and a Masters in Law degree in International Human Rights Law at the University of Oxford, UK. Ariadna has worked in several access-to-justice initiatives, which include strategic litigation at local and international levels, the use of technology to increase legal literacy and organizing movement lawyers. She is the founder and Executive Director of Ayuda Legal Puerto Rico, Inc. (Puerto Rico Legal Aid)  and an adjunct professor at the Universidad de Puerto Rico, where she teaches courses on human rights, political theory, and international relations. Her academic scholarship revolves around human rights, gender, austerity and the right to protest. Her first book Las propias: Apuntes para una pedagogía de las endeudadas (Our Own: Notes towards a pedagogy of the indebted) offers a feminist approach to the Island’s debt crisis and was published in March 2018.
​​​​​​​
Nicole Marie Díaz González studied Journalism and Law at the University of Puerto Rico and is currently a Master of Public Administration (MPA) candidate. She has worked in the fields of labor law and free speech, and was admitted to the Puerto Rican bar in February 2015 and to the Federal District bar in 2017. In September 2019, she joined Ayuda Legal Puerto Rico as a Public Policy Analyst.​​​​​​​