PDA – Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (the office of PCUSA which coordinates relief for Presbyterians)

VV – Volunteer Village, Tent city which will house 100 volunteers

Essential Services - Feeding, Clearing streets, mucking out and tarping homes, Volunteer coordination, Temporary housing

Mucking out - Tearing out dry-walls, carpets, ceilings which have gotten wet, removing appliances and furniture which has been ruined.

POD - Point of Distribution, where food, clothing, supplies are brought and distributed to the residents.

Early Sept – Presbyterian Disaster Assistance – decides that early response for Presbyterians would be the construction of Volunteer Villages in South Mississippi. Established first VV in Gautier, MS

9/8 – PDA calls WPC and asks us to set up Volunteer Village II – that materials would cost about $20,000.

9/11-17 – about 60 WPC volunteers gathered materials and arranged transportation for the trip.

9/18-19- Team arrives in D’Iberville and establishes Volunteer Village II with showers, tents, cots, tables. Electricity comes on as well as water. Realizes that they can probably do VV III in Diamondhead and orders tents, cots, etc.

9/25 – WPC offered another $10 K challenge grant. That challenge was met by today.

Why PDA decided to build and operate Volunteer Villages as first response to Katrina??

First of all, there are 100’s of people who want to come to Gulf Coast to do relief work, but there are no places for them to stay or to eat.

Second, FEMA will pay 95% of cost to rehab municipal services, but the towns have to come up with the other 5%. For towns like Gautier, Diamondhead, and especially D’Iberville, that 5% would not be possible. However, FEMA will let the community count the fair market value of volunteer hours as part of the 5%. (in the first 5 days, our Team logged 792 Volunteer Hours.).

1. D’Iberville is just north of Biloxi. It used to be a small, sleepy fishing village; but has grown to about 11, 000 inhabitants, primarily occupied by Roman Catholics, folks in the fishing and construction work. A very poor community. It is not a whole lot unlike Tarboro/Princeville.

2. The center of Katrina passed over it. 60% of structures were totally destroyed; 100% were damaged in some way.

3. You can get into D’Iberville. You cannot get into Biloxi or New Orleans, but volunteers from our Volunteer Village will eventually be able to go other places. However, there is enough damage in D’Iberville to keep volunteers busy for several years.

After being “burned” by several zealous groups, who set up tents for feeding and housing, took lots of video footage, but then began to proselytize the volunteers and residents, and also mis-used some of the donated food and supplies, the Mayor asked them to leave and decided that D’Iberville would control who came into town to help.

When our team arrived, a systematic needs assessment was underway, involving a house to house canvassing of the town by AmeriCorps volunteers. The survey, organized by two residents, both college professors, identified people in critical need, but there was no system to turn the data into information for use by volunteer disaster relief teams. We needed a way to generate daily taskings and begin to work down the list of houses needing tarps, debris removal and tarps. Other important questions people were trying to ask of the data were: who needs mental health survellance and who needs prescription refills. Dorene donated and set up a personal computer to help capture and organize this data from the forms. Kevin Kelly organized a simple spreadsheet system to capture both the needs assessment data and the status of completed work. In 48 hours the volunteer coordination center had rudimentary ability to match needs with volunteer relief crews. They also had the ability to do targeted analysis, for example the first report run from the new system was a list of all residents identified as needing mental health follow up. Mental health professioals were dispatched for home visits using this report. Other targeted lists quickly followed, a list of elderly and disabled needing food was next and in the day before Rita hit we used the system to dispatch crews to put tarps on houses with damaged roofs.

After other volunteers left last week, our folks stepped in to assist with delivering Essential Services for D’Iberville. Other volunteer groups include the AmeriCorp and the Cayahoga Falls fire, police and city services crews.

For the next few days, our group will continue to feed about 1000 people a day, help with clean up, tarping and mucking out homes, and getting materials over to VV III and teaching other volunteers how to set up the tents, tables, showers, etc. They should be back in Durham Friday night.

2. Established systems of triage and assignment of work for current and future volunteers in D’Iberville.

4. Furnished materials for Volunteer Village 3 which will another 100 volunteers in Diamondhead, MS.

6. Though our Mission Team and the gifts which you provided to make it happen, God has led all of us to put hands and feet on our faith.

7. Realized how great the need is on the Gulf Coast, and became even more grateful for the thousands of people who are doing their best to be part of this huge relief effort.