CREW 2009 1st half report

6 month Report for 2009
Hurricane Season is upon us. Yet we are working on clients’ still needing help from Hurricane Wilma in 2005 and Tropical Storm Faye in 2008. What we need most is skilled volunteers and funds for operational expenses and materials.
Hurricane Wilma was the most intense hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic basin. Wilma was the 22nd storm (including the subtropical storm discovered in reanalysis), 13th hurricane, 6th major hurricane, and 4th Category 5 hurricane of the record-breaking 2005 season. We have closed 748 cases from this storm. We have 48 cases still open.
Tropical Storm Fay was the 6th named storm of the 2008 Atlantic hurricane season which hit our area August 19th. In our area (Hendry, Glades and Okeechobee Counties), Fay caused massive flooding, two deaths in Moorehaven, lots of flooding and wind damage. Roofs were torn apart and homes flooded. We responded by finding volunteers to muck out flooded homes and tarp roofs. We also partnered with the Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church to get flood buckets, health kits, vitamins and tarps to people who needed them. We currently have about 56 clients from Fay, 35 are pending documentation to open, 2 are open. We have mucked out 6 homes and tarped 40 homes from this storm (this was prior to the cases even being opened).
We have closed all the cases attached with Tropical Storm Ernesto, which was the costliest tropical cyclone of the 2006 Atlantic hurricane season. The sixth tropical storm and first hurricane of the season, Ernesto developed from a tropical wave on August 24 in the eastern Caribbean Sea. Ernesto first affected the northern Caribbean, reaching minimal hurricane status near Haiti before weakening and moving across eastern Cuba as a tropical storm. Despite initial predictions for it to track through the eastern Gulf of Mexico as a major hurricane, Ernesto moved across eastern Florida as a tropical storm and caused quite a bit of wind and flooding damage throughout our area.
We also successfully ended our Mitigation program that was funded through Volunteer Florida Foundation and provided us the funds necessary to hire licensed and screened professionals to mitigate 100 low income homes with storm shutters throughout our service area.
Since CREW began keeping records, to date we have had 102 volunteer groups and 321 individual volunteers who have donated 25,591.5 hours for a cumulative in kind donation of $480,839.38. These groups have also donated supplies and cash for a cumulative total of $7,059.00. The local churches and businesses have also donated space and meals to these volunteers for a cumulative total of $425,695. A local storage company has donated storage space to us for the year for an in kind donation of $900.00.
By the end of the first half of 2009, we have closed 789 cases due to all needs being met, or being referred to other agencies because their needs are not appropriate for CREW assistance or they were able to get their needs met with assistance from our case managers by helping them apply for assistance with partner and other agencies we referred them to.
2009 provided CREW with many volunteers. Two local volunteers and volunteers from Christian Contractors helped us assess numerous homes to discover if needs were truly hurricane related and if so, what skills and materials would be needed to make repairs. Two other local volunteers helped in the office, helped with small repairs and joined in with the other volunteers to help complete repairs.
Our first quarter also saw, eight volunteer groups from various faiths came from Florida, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Ohio traveled to our rural area and worked on numerous homes helping us to finish repairs and close more cases. They replaced two total roofs, repaired seven other roofs, replaced drywall, repaired plumbing and replaced flooring.

A church which regularly sends us volunteers, Pompano Beach Presbyterian Church came on May 30 and hung drywall, installed vinyl flooring, baseboards and installed a storm door for one of our families.

Each of the months from January to May we had groups from East Lake United Methodist Church return to work on repairing bathrooms, repairing plumbing and installing a tub and 1 client’s bathroom installing a new ceiling and painting the bedroom ceiling. This group consisted of 3 Caucasian males and 1 Asian Indian male and 3 Caucasian females. This group worked a total of 70 hours for an in kind donation of $1312.25. The group arrived late Friday night and was hosted by First United Methodist Church for an in kind donation of $140.00. This group also sent a donation in June of $1376.37.
Three couples (one from New York, one from Pennsylvania, and another from Michigan) came and built shelves for our shed, and replaced drywall, worked on electrical and plumbing issues, and helped repair roofs. These couples came in the first quarter of this year.
In June First Congregation of Plymouth from Virginia tore out old carpet, ceiling drywall and bathroom underlay and replaced the ceiling and flooring. Alive in You Camp came also, the replaced cabinets, painted ceilings, replaced doors and paneling, replaced a vanity, took up old water damaged carpet and replaced with vinyl tiles
We have been donated a space for storing all of our equipment by Sharon Harris in Moore Haven. This donation was started in January and the total in kind donation equals $600.00 to date.
CREW remains an active member of FIND and Florida VOAD. Due to funding issues, the executive director has moved to part time, but is actively involved with CREW as their executive director, and remains an officer for Florida VOAD. We are holding LTRO meetings this quarter every other month.
We still have a lot of needs to meet.
We had 67 families from Tropical Storm Fay ask for help, we have had the volunteers and funds to help 8 of them so far. We have funding for several more, and we have another 8 of these families who have completed the application process with CREW. This requires the families to prove the need, prove the damages were done by the storm (with the help of our Construction Coordinator) and provide financial proof of need. The rest of the 67 families have begun the application process but have not yet brought in all the required documentation needed for verification. Our case managers are diligently working on this. And as for Hurricane Wilma, we have 19 more cases that need volunteers and funding.
An example of those in need:

Isabella, a 54 year old woman lives with her husband Judge, 58 years old. Hurricane Wilma left them with severe damages. They had roof, flooring walls and structure damage to the home. They received $5,661.94 from their insurance company which they used to repair their roof and parts of the flooring. They still have part of the living room floor to repair and the bathroom and bedroom are also in need of new ceiling and walls. Judge’s income was the only income in the household and after the storm he was laid off by U.S Sugar Corp. due to there down sizing. Isabella receives disability and with his 401k funds they are currently paying their bills and are barely making ends meet. If Judge does not find employment soon he will run out of his 401k. If we can get volunteers, the cost of materials to fix their home will be $500.00.

Decrease in funding has resulted in a decrease in staff members and an increase in the duties of remaining staff members. In addition, lower numbers of cases and less volunteers willing to come to this area has resulted in less work load. We also have used unskilled volunteers quite a bit, resulting in the fact that the cases left need highly and specifically skilled volunteers. Our part time construction coordinator is able to assist these volunteer groups and help with assessments. We are limited in the volunteers we can take now as well, as most of the need we have left is only for highly or specifically skilled volunteers. The executive director has used he pull influence (lol) to encourage the help of a highly skilled construction worker, her husband for some of the jobs, when he is not working on other jobs. Of course the bad turn in economy and the less number of new construction projects has helped us out in this area as well.
Being able to stay in tact to help with small disasters like fires, and being able to continue to teach community to be prepared for future storms, and remain intact in order to be prepared for any future storms is our dream, but no funding is foreseen for this. Lack of funding has caused us to loose our full time director to a part time person. We are part of the Glades County Disaster Plan and work closely with them in keeping plans up to date. We have agreed to manage volunteers and donations for the county in the event of a disaster for their county.
We did receive new grants this year from UMCOR, UCC and Volunteer Florida Foundation, which is helping to pay staff and buy materials for volunteers.
Trish Adams and Renee Mergott presented at the Governor’s Hurricane Conference teaching a workshop entitled “Volunteers, Keep ‘em coming back”.
Trish and Renee also attended the FLVOAD meeting in May. Trish was re-elected to remain as part of the Executive Committee for FLVOAD, as we prepare to be the site of the 2010 National VOAD conference which will be held in Orlando.
CREW won the Governor’s Hurricane Conference Humanitarian Award in May. One of our funders, UMCOR shared in winning the Humanitarian Award with us, according to the committee, they had several nominees and narrowed it down to the two of us and decided to give us both the award. We were nominated by Glades County Emergency Services Director, whose own mobile home was destroyed in a fire this year, yet denied assistance from CREW when we offered, stating that she knew their were others that needed it more.
As of June 30, 2008 we have spent all of the funds from our organized fundraisers, as well as grants from CRWRC, the United Way/NFL grant, the United Way of Lee Hendry and Glades, Lutheran Disaster, the Rotary, Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, and several grants from UCC, Volunteer Florida Foundation and the Disaster Recovery Ministry of the Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church. We currently have $4,188.49 in our general fund from private donors and small fundraising activities; $5,642.60 from the United Church of Christ Grant; $ 24,698.90 from Volunteer Florida Foundation for Tropical Storm Fay, and $137.74 from Disaster Recovery Ministry of the Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church, however we are expecting more grant funds from them soon.
What is our dream, our plans? Continue to recruit skilled volunteers. Continue fundraising activities and grant researching and writing. Work with local agencies to help Tropical Storm Fay victims who have not applied for assistance yet get the help they need. Be available to help small disaster victims such as fire and floods, as well as be here to help in the event of another major disaster and educated our community about the need for mitigation and planning prior to a storm’s threat.

WE NEED VOLUNTEERS AND FUNDS!!!!
We need SKILLED volunteers who can help repair homes but also need volunteers to assist in the office. We really want local volunteers, people to invest in their own community. Call Renee to volunteer at (863) 983-2390.

You can also help CREW by simply shopping. If you like AVON, you can visit our AVON rep’s website for more information and to register: http://dbroniak.avonrepresentative.com/. We just recently received our first check from AVON for this new fundraiser.

You can also help by simply shopping through the iGive portal and registering CREW as your charity of choice. Simply visit the link below to do so. We are getting regular monthly checks from iGive so I know it is working! http://www.iGive.com/html/refer.cfm?memberid=324218&causeid=35958

Donations can be sent to 352 W. Arcade Ave., Clewiston, Florida 33440. We are a registered non-profit and donations are tax deductible.

Visit our blog site to learn more about what we are up to and to see pictures. It is not always being kept up to date but we are trying! http://huricanerecovery.blogspot.com/. We also have recently created a Facebook page, you can find us at http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/pages/CREW-Community-Rebuilding-Ecumenical-Workforce/156347733503?ref=ts.