28/06/2026
Official statement: Sagan Flores would like to offer clarity regarding recent public conversations around the warehouse fill-a-bag initiative on Saipan.
Sagan Flores was not part of the decision-making structure for this initiative and was not involved in its planning, approval, or implementation.
The TSLC warehouse is a collaborative disaster recovery effort made up of multiple nonprofit organizations and volunteers working together toward a shared mission.
While we operate within the same warehouse, different aspects of operations are led by different organizations and designated leadership teams. The fill-a-bag initiative was developed and managed through a separate leadership structure, and Sagan Flores was not involved in that decision-making process.
As a holistic mental health and healing-centered organization, we believe that how we care for one another during recovery is just as important as the resources themselves. Our work is guided by values that support both individual and collective well-being, including integrity, transparency, compassion, stewardship, dignity, accountability, and community trust.
We believe disaster recovery is strengthened through clear communication, thoughtful stewardship of donated resources, collaborative leadership, and decision-making that helps cultivate trust, clarity, and long-term community healing.
At the same time, we also hold compassion as a core principle in how we understand moments like this.
From a mental health and nervous system perspective, individuals working in disaster response and recovery are often operating under sustained high stress, limited resources, and continuous exposure to urgent community need.
In these conditions, the nervous system can remain in prolonged states of survival response - such as hypervigilance, urgency, and cognitive overload (a state where the brain is processing more stress and information than it can effectively organize or regulate) - which can narrow decision-making capacity and increase the likelihood of imperfect or reactive choices, even when intentions are rooted in care.
For this reason, compassion is not just a moral stance, but also a psychological and physiological understanding of how humans function under chronic pressure. When people are operating in survival mode for extended periods of time, the ability to fully integrate long-term consequences, emotional nuance, and systemic implications becomes significantly more difficult.
Recognizing this does not remove accountability, but it does help us understand behavior through a lens that supports learning, repair, and collective healing rather than isolation or blame.
Disaster response also takes place within broader systemic realities that can shape organizational decision-making.
Across the humanitarian and disaster recovery sectors, chronic under-resourcing, limited staffing, financial strain, and prolonged emergency conditions can create environments where organizations are asked to meet overwhelming community needs with insufficient capacity.
Researchers have also written about disaster capitalism - the ways disasters can expose or amplify existing structural inequities and resource imbalances - which can further complicate recovery efforts and place additional pressure on organizations and communities alike.
While these systemic realities do not remove accountability for individual decisions, they do provide important context for understanding how chronic stress, scarcity, and institutional pressures can influence judgment, organizational culture, and the choices that emerge during prolonged recovery efforts.
We also approach somatic awareness (the practice of noticing and understanding what is happening in the body - such as stress responses, tension, or emotional activation - as a way to better understand our reactions and needs in real time) as an important part of how we make sense of both individual and collective experiences during high-stress environments.
Compassion and repair are central to how we approach situations like this.
As a mental health nonprofit, we value the ability to engage in honest reflection while also creating space for learning, restoration, and continued collaboration.
We believe that community empowerment is strengthened not only through accountability, but also through the willingness to repair, adapt, and stay in relationship with one another in ways that support long-term trust and collective well-being.
These are the kinds of conversations Sagan Flores is committed to holding and sharing within our community - bridging mental health education, somatic awareness, and community healing so that we can better understand ourselves and one another in times of stress and transition.
We believe these conversations are important. They reflect a community that cares deeply about how recovery work is done, and that care is essential to long-term healing and trust-building.
Sagan Flores has been on a short pause for the last two weeks and will be resuming active work in the next few weeks as our founder returns to island. During this time, we have remained in reflection and continued commitment to how we show up in alignment with our values.
We are grateful for the community's continued engagement and commitment to doing recovery work in ways that honor both dignity and accountability.
We remain committed to listening, learning, collaborating, and strengthening how we contribute to healing in the CNMI and beyond.
