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AID Baton Rouge Katrina Relief Efforts |
October 2005 Newsletter
Being next door to the disaster place, the Baton Rouge chapter volunteers immediately decided to jump in and aid some of the local hurricane relief efforts even before the AID executive committee made clear the stance AID will take in helping the Katrina relief. Below is an update on the efforts taken by our volunteers.
Volunteering at the shelters As some of our regular volunteers were either out of town or tied-up with their personal commitments we sent out an email to the Indian students at LSU asking them to volunteer their time at the shelters set up in LSU. There was a very good response for our call and the volunteers did shifts of 4 hours each through out the Labor Day long weekend, at the ?PMAC' and the ?field house' shelters in LSU. Our volunteers, including girls, even did late night shifts (between 8pm and 8am). We highlight this because there was a security alert on campus and in spite of that our volunteers were enthusiastic in coming forward to help. The work at the shelters mainly involved helping the patients get to the places like dispensary, transportation area etc, distributing food during meal time, helping the doctors and patients in getting the medical and other non-medical supplies from the storage place, assisting elderly people and patients to the restroom, sweeping the floors of the shelter etc. Each shift had about 10 to 15 volunteers; sometime the same volunteers did more than one shift.
We also made collection drives at our neighborhood for collecting relief materials for the people living in the shelters. Based on the information that we gathered from the shelter we had printed a flier requesting people to donate certain materials needed and posted it on the doors of the apartments. The fliers basically asked people to place their donation materials outside their door at a specific time and our volunteers went and picked up the donation bags from every house. Our volunteers did this for 2 consecutive days and collected 6 car loads of relief materials. Some of the materials collected included clothes, toys, toilet supplies etc. Due to overwhelming support from the local community the shelters were already overflowing with relief materials and said they could not accept anymore donations. Our volunteers approached some of the local churches in vain, but finally found a Red Cross center, which gratefully accepted the relief materials that we collected. The whole efforts, volunteering at the shelter and collection drive, were well coordinated by our volunteers Manoj and Sriram.
In the meantime, we came to know that the local Indian community has formed an association called "Hindu American Community for Katrina Relief" to help the displaced people from New Orleans. We offered our support to them and were asked to act as a liaison between them and the displaced Indian students. We found out that about 35 Indian students from New Orleans will be joining LSU for the current semester and realized that finding an accommodation for them should be the first priority. Our volunteers took a survey by going to each Indian student's apartment here and asked them if they will be able to accommodate one or more displaced students from New Orleans. Since there was not enough room to accommodate that many students we were trying to find some more places to accommodate these students but most of them, fortunately, were able to find on-campus apartments themselves.
The ?Hindu American Community (HAC)' realizing that the displaced students are without their belongings, wanted to collect some materials that are immediately needed by the displaced students. One of our volunteer went and talked to these students and made a list of materials that they immediately needed. This list of needed materials was then circulated to the local Indian community, by the HAC. They were asked to drop their donations at a hall, in the LSU campus, on September 18th between 3pm - 7pm. The response from the local community was amazing. Some of the items donated included Microwave, Rice cookers, mattresses, sleeping bags, blankets, and cooking utensils. The students were then asked to come and "shop" for what they need, from the collected materials. The HAC had also arranged for a $10,000 donation through BAPS, for all the students (about $250/student) as an immediate help. Dinner, cooked by the local Indian community, was also served for all.
We believe that we have strengthened our relationship with the local community by joining hands with them in the Katrina relief efforts and we are looking forward to working with them closely in the future.
Contributed by Suresh Gunasekaran
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Visit the AID Baton Rouge chapter at: http://batonrouge.aidindia.org
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