By Jim Mahar, Professor Columnist
BonaResponds was founded in the weeks after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 to help those in need after natural disasters. While BonaResponds evolved into new areas during the intervening years, helping people after natural disasters is still at the heart of everything we do. Thus, when Hurricane Harvey hit the Houston area in the first week of the 2017-18 school year, there was no question that BonaResponds was going to help.
In September, BonaResponds and Enactus teamed up with local fire departments and students from the University of Pittsburgh – Bradford to raise money to assist in storm recovery. In the weeks that followed, we collected over $10,000. In addition to the money, we worked with the Olean Medical Group and Portlight Strategies, a South Carolina charity that we have worked with after numerous disasters. The charity specializes in post-disaster assistance for those with physical challenges to send over 50 wheelchairs to the Texas coast.
In October, a small group of BonaResponds leaders made a scouting trip to the Houston area and determined there was a need for a larger response over spring break. And with that, planning for the upcoming spring break trip began.
Planning for a post-disaster trip involves much uncertainty, and it is impossible to know how everything will go, but we do know some things.
We know we will be staying at the Mount Olive Baptist Church in Dickinson, Texas. Dickinson was hit extremely hard, with estimates of over 7,000 homes flooded and water in the downtown district being over 20 feet high. Mount Olive and Pastor Amos Sowell have fed almost a thousand meals daily since the water receded and are now playing central roles in the area’s rebuilding.
We will be doing much work, bringing hope and helping get people back in their homes.
We know that drywall installation, mudding and painting will be three of the main jobs. We know that we will also be assisting at a local food pantry. We know we will be helping to set up a volunteer camp so that other groups will have a place to stay.
We will help many people. We know that we will help set the stage for future volunteers who will continue our work long after spring break is over.
Volunteers on the trip will learn physical skills, meet new friends and have a great time while gaining a new perspective on life’s challenges.
What we don’t know yet: whether you will be with us. We hope you come. It is almost too late. We need to know this weekend if you want a free pickup and drop off at the airport from the family of SBU alumni in the greater Houston area.
Joining us is easy. Buy plane tickets for some portion of the Feb. 23 to March 3 period. Send the flight information to BonaResponds student president Yvonne Gerhmann (gehrmayn14@bonaventure.edu), who will guide you the rest of the way. Once you are there we provide a place to stay, as well as food.
• This Saturday from noon to 3 p.m., we are asking anyone who is going on the trip to stop by the BonaResponds “storage area” by the Challenger Center (to the west of campus) to get a quick “drywall lesson.”
• Anyone traveling this spring break, with us or not, who would like to offset their carbon consumption, can do so through positiveripples.org. Your donation will allow us to work with groups in Haiti to plant trees in the area around Leogane and Les Cayes.
• Quote of the week: “No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another.” – Charles Dickens
This is the third in a series of articles on BonaResponds by BonaResponds leader, Jim Mahar, Ph.D.
