Big and little disasters seem to be happening all over the contry these days. My area is just starting to deal with the aftermath of all tnose Southern California fires. Since it directly affected my neighborhood 4 years ago we in the neighborhood felt that we needed to do something to help the people who lost everything. Several projects came up in brainstorming sessions. I want to tell you about the one I was involved in.
We are a neighborhood full of people who like some order to their lives. The thing most remembered from the Cedar Fire was that lack of order and how difficult it was to think or focus or keep track of things as people moved from hotel to rental ... SO, we made a tote box full of prelabeled file folders to get the fire survivors through at least the first couple of months. Dividers categorized the file folders into areas most likely to occur in an insurance policy like "additional living expenses" (in insurance talk, ALE), rental issues - contracts, rental insurance, lists of lost personal items, even a file folder to corral discounts that businesses offer to fema card holders. Ziplock bags to hold all those crazy sized food receipts. Someone even contributed envelopes and postage stamps to put in the boxes.
Anyway, I got to help assemble 500 boxes and then distribute them at the disaster center. It was so great to give those people a little piece of control in an otherwise totally out of control time. Now we're trying to organize to build some more. So many more people lost homes.
Just passing the idea along to plant a seed - next time you're in the area of a disaster where people lose everything, something you can consider doing, especially if you're a disaster survivor from a prior event.
