NEW ORLEANS – The New Orleans-based Footprint Project has been selected as a recipient of the 2025 Verizon Disaster Resilience Prize, a national program awarding $1 million in grants to organizations developing technologies aimed at strengthening disaster preparedness and response. The prize, administered through Verizon’s Community Disaster Resilience Initiative in partnership with MIT Solve, recognizes
NEW ORLEANS – The New Orleans-based Footprint Project has been selected as a recipient of the 2025 Verizon Disaster Resilience Prize, a national program awarding $1 million in grants to organizations developing technologies aimed at strengthening disaster preparedness and response.
The prize, administered through Verizon’s Community Disaster Resilience Initiative in partnership with MIT Solve, recognizes innovators whose technologies can support emergency response and recovery efforts.
Founded in 2018 and headquartered in New Orleans, the Footprint Project is a nonprofit disaster-response organization that focuses on providing clean, renewable energy during disasters and recovery efforts. The organization develops and deploys sustainable energy systems, including portable solar panels, battery storage and mobile microgrids designed to provide power when traditional energy sources are unavailable.
The systems can operate critical infrastructure such as medical equipment, communications and charging stations, water filtration systems and food operations at community hubs. Unlike conventional diesel generators commonly used during emergency response, the solar-powered systems operate quietly, produce no local emissions and can be deployed quickly in disaster zones.
The organization’s work reflects a growing trend in disaster management aimed at reducing the environmental impact of relief operations while improving energy reliability during emergencies.
Footprint Project: Resilient Energy for Disaster Response
The Footprint Project operates across the disaster lifecycle, deploying mobile solar generators for rapid disaster response immediately after events, supporting recovery efforts with temporary microgrids and providing training and equipment so community organizations can operate clean-energy systems before and after disasters.
Since its launch, the organization reports completing more than 30 disaster response missions. During those efforts, the group has helped power more than 250 resilience hubs during outages and deployed more than 300 kilowatts of mobile solar equipment.
Overall, the organization says its work has supported more than 50,000 people with access to emergency energy. These deployments have taken place following hurricanes, wildfires and other climate-related disasters across the United States.
Footprint Project’s mobile solar systems have been deployed in response to several recent disasters, including Hurricane Helene in North Carolina, the Maui wildfires and severe storm-related outages in Texas.
The Footprint Project is one of four organizations selected for the Verizon Disaster Resilience Prize, which recognizes technologies designed to strengthen disaster preparedness and response. The nonprofit’s mobile solar arrays can be remotely monitored and help power communications infrastructure and other critical devices during emergency outages.
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