Three 18-wheelers filled with diapers, bottled water, toilet paper and other items arrived in Baton Rouge this morning from Gulfport, Mississippi, where residents gathered the donations to help repay south Louisiana flood victims for the assistance they provided after Hurricane Katrina.
The donations were taken to Performance Contractors on Pecue Lane, where local entrepreneurs and small business owners are helping coordinate distribution of the donated items.
Jared Loftus, chief operating officer of MasteryPrep and a Mississippi native, says many local organizations were unprepared to handle the sheer quantity of the donations coming from Gulfport. Performance Contractors, which has the needed equipment and manpower, will function as a distribution point and help get the supplies to organization in need of support, Loftus says.
“It’s been a massive effort,” he says. “They’ve done a large drive for donations for the last several days. What they thought would end up being one 18-wheeler full of donations, ended up being three 18-wheelers.”
The Sun Herald reports the effort began on Friday when the city’s first lady Paula Hewes told Gulfport spokesman Chris Vignes that something needed to be done to help flooded residents in the Baton Rouge area. Vignes and Rebecca Kajdan, an assistant to the mayor of Gulfport, came up with One Coast One Relief effort and posted about it on the city’s Facebook page. The response was overwhelming.
Loftus, who was helping out at the shelter set up at Celtic Studios on Saturday, says a friend from Gulfport reached out to him to help coordinate distributing the donations. Other local entrepreneurs and business owners also got involved after volunteering to help through government avenues, Loftus says.
“You put a bunch of business owners and entrepreneurs inside a government system and they just see a bunch of inefficiencies,” he says. “It’s no surprise that they would come out with ways to solve it.”
Numerous organizations will benefit from the donations over the coming weeks.
—Alexandria Burris
