The Rev. Richard L. Krajeski has served the Presbyterian Church and the ecumenical community as an ordained pastor for over 40 years and the disaster response community for 30 years. He spent 40 years as a pastor in the mountains of Kentucky and West Virginia and now lives and works in the delta area of Southern Louisiana – all place of ‘economic, environmental and human extraction’. He has been active in environmental justice ministries throughout his ministry. Dick’s academic background includes degrees in philosophy and theology. His doctoral studies were in the area of applied technology, sustainable development, and ethics.
Dick has been a Disaster Resource Specialist for Church World Service with special skills in the areas of long-term spiritual and emotional health, long-term disaster response and preparedness and mitigation. He was a member of the National Presbyterian Disaster Response Team, and has served as a member of the national Presbyterian Disaster Response Advisory Committee. He has been instrumental in introducing the concept of mitigation, vulnerability and resilience to the religious community.
Dick has served as a ‘Creation Enabler’ with the national Presbyterian environmental program and was an active founding member of the West Virginia Interfaith Network on Climate Change and now works and does research in the area for building resilient communities.
His disaster related publication co-authored with his wife Kristina Peterson include;“But She Is a Women and This Is a Man’s Job”: Lessons for Participatory Research and Participatory Recoveryappeared in the International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters. He has written a chapter in The Big Thompson Flood: Twenty Years Later, the journal Church and Society, a chapter the recently published Women and Disasters: From Theory to Practice, and‘Women of Faith’ in The Women of Katrina (forthcoming). Rev. Krajeski was awarded the Disaster Response Meritorious Service Award by CWS in 1999 for “his work in developing the long-term response of the religious community and his advocacy with marginalized people. He has recently been elected a Follow in the Society for Applied Anthropology. He has several publications on mitigation in the process of being published.
Rev. Krajeski was a founding member of the international Gender and Disaster Network and a founding member and board member of the Natural Hazard Mitigation Association. He does policy and program analysis with Center for Hazard Analysis Response and Technology (CHART) at the University of New Orleans on an Army Corp on Engineers’ Social Factors in Mitigation Program, NOAA’s Resiliency Index Development Program and on an evaluation of the Stafford Act and FEMA’s response to Hurricane Katrina. He has also done policy and program analysis and development for FEMA’s Family and Community Protection Program, FEMA’s Mitigation Directorate, and Higher Education Division, Church World Service Disaster Response and Presbyterian Disaster Assistance.