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Click Here for Hurricane Resources
Requests for Assistance
Feeding Displaced Children Through Federal Child Nutrition Programs (U.S. Dept. of Agriculture)
SAMHSA Katrina Assistance Project
Opportunities and Change. I returned to New Orleans in November amidst its difficulties, confusions, and desolations. The Brief Therapy Center and Family Therapy Institute of Greater New Orleans is again open. I welcome referrals and look forward to talking with anyone who wishes to discuss matters related to this area and its current conditions and to meeting my colleagues who have chosen to come to the Gulf Coast to lend a hand. If I can lend you all a hand, please advise. My phone numbers remain the same: (H) 504-897-2261; (C) 504-905-4120; (O) 504-891-2464; drgeorgegreenberg@yahoo.com
Charlene Allen of the Funding Exchange has coordinated the establishment of a fund to provide relief to Hurricane Katrina survivors, filling in the gap left by existing mainstream relief efforts. All monies will go to grass roots groups run by and for African-Americans. Please send check to: The Funding Exchange, 666 Broadway, Suite 500, NY, NY 10012. Please note in the memo section of your check: Emergency Hurricane Relief. This donation will be tax-deductible, as FEX is a currently established foundation. You can reach Charlene at charlene.allen@fex.org. You can reach her at work at 212-529-5300.
Assistance for Special Project. Rachel Breunlin, daughter of AFTA member, Doug Bruenlin, has lived in New Orleans for a decade. Rachel is an urban anthro-pologist with a particular interest in the most challenged neighborhoods of New Orleans.
While Rachel made it to Houston safely, like others, she suffered many losses. More to the point of AFTA and its mission, however, is the nature of the work she has been doing.
She is the co-director of a program called the "Neigh-borhood Story Project," which is sponsored through UNO. In this capacity she teaches a high school course in which her students conducted interviews with neighbors and relatives and then the students turned their work into a book.
Rachel is mourning not only her own losses, but also the loss of the neighbor-hoods she had come to love and the students and their families who she came to know intimately.
She would like to continue the work of the Neighborhood Story Project, and to focus on the gathering of stories about Katrina and its impact on the neighborhoods. She has the trust and confidence of a group of citizens who will open their hearts to her.
She will need funding to continue this work. She is also hoping to receive some donations that will enable her to offer assistance to those she knows who have nothing.
As AFTA members weigh various options for offering support, Rachel and Doug ask that the Neighborhood Story Project might be included among your consid-erations. Any further information that you might require can be obtained from Doug (d-breunlin@northwestern.edu) or from Rachel directly at rbreunlin@yahoo.com.
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Friends,
I've just completed a two-week deployment with American Red Cross Disaster Mental Health in Gulfport, MS. I was part of mobile Neighborhood Care Teams assigned to meet folks at their destroyed or heavily damaged homes from Gulfport through Long Beach and Pass Christian beach communities. Today is my first day back and I am a bit choked up. I felt so torn leaving - having to get back to my own practice, but feeling so for the people I leave behind now scared of Rita.
We had up to 100 mental health workers in our DR 307 (Red Cross speak for the Alabama, Mississippi, and eastern Louisiana zone) who worked tirelessly. In addition to 25 neighborhood care teams who fanned out through the communities daily, we staffed client shelters and family service centers. The volunteers all sleep in staff shelters, the biggest being 1000 staff crammed in on cots in a large Naval warehouse - no AC until yesterday. Being a sleep weenie, I couldn't handle that and slept in my car for 2 weeks.
Most of the communities are returning to some kind of normalcy with water and electricity restored, but something like 5 percent of the homes have been destroyed or heavily damaged, and many people I met either had a relative or friend or someone they knew about die.
It has been an overwhelming experience and the needs of the folks down here are monumental. I personally spoke with at least 200 people, and many are resilient but at the point of psychological exhaustion. I also had the privilege of speaking on local radio and many people heard the message - take care of yourselves first, take care of each other with understandable emotional reactions to the trauma, and get people who need help to ARC DMH personnel who can bridge to local mental health authorities while they regroup. The local battered women's shelter was destroyed and I had a hard time finding help for the victims of all the increase in domestic violence. And, the children need a great deal of attention, compassion, and focus.
We really need help. Contact the Red Cross or another appropriate agency to volunteer if you can.
Tom Conran
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