Teamwork, our greatest accomplishment!

Last week and this week have been a time for CREW to recognize those that have helped us accomplish so much, as well as be recognized for working with others for the common goal of improving the lives of the those in our community.

Here is a picture of Pastor Thom Street, President of CREW, receiving a certificate of appreciation from the Red Cross which was presented to CREW at our monthly LTRO and Unmet Needs meeting for all of our efforts "in assisting the families, individuals and communities affected by Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma. The Red Cross has been and continues to be a great partner with CREW in helping meet the needs of our two rural counties.

Renee Mergott, Volunteer Coordinator for CREW and acting Case Manager Supervisor for CREW traveled with Trish Adams, Executive Director of CREW and Long Term Recovery Coordinator for Hendry and Glades County for the United Way of Lee, Hendry and Glades traveled to Tallahassee and Havana Florida for three day this week to attend the Florida Donations Portal Training, Florida VOAD meeting and ESF 15 meeting. While there, they were able to network with lots of partners in disaster recovery, such as Reverend Karen Thomas from United Church of Christ Disaster Services and Rick Heers from IHOPE.

At one point during our time in Tallahassee, CREW was finally able to catch up with Reverend Karen Thomas (pictured here with Trish Adams, Executive Director) from the United Church of Christ Disaster Relief Services. She has sent us numerous volunteer groups, as well as funded a number of our projects, you can read about them in previous posts. We have been trying to give her our appreciation of assistance since our big Fundraiser last year, and we were finally able to catch up with her, certificate in hand.

http://www.ucc.org/oghs/stories/a-family-vacation-in-florida.html

We were also able to catch up with Danielle Kearney from Lutheran Disaster Resources while in Tallahassee. LDR has been a great partner from the day CREW was formed. They helped teach us how to do what we do, provided us with software to do it, volunteers to accomplish and funds to help buy the materials needed to complete it. We had been waiting to give her her certificate of appreciate for a long time as well. http://www.disastervolunteers.org/ops/info.php?desc=160

That night Renee and Trish left Tallahassee for Havana Florida, where we stayed at the Pat Thomas Law Enforcement Academy Barracks. The next day we networked with agencies and attended the Florida VOAD http://www.flvoad.org/ meeting where the Florida VOAD officers were presented with a plaque of appreciate from Alex Amparo, Director of Emergency Management from From Volunteer Florida and the State Emergency Response Team (SERT). Volunteer Florida http://www.volunteerfloridafoundation.org/index.php.