While much of the country has turned its attention away from the devastation in south Louisiana in the more than two months since the historic August flood, one nonprofit continues to draw volunteers from all over the world to help the region rebuild, writes Business Report Editor Stephanie Riegel in her latest column.
All Hand Volunteers—a 12-year-old, nondenominational relief organization—still has volunteers cycling in and out of south Louisiana, Riegel says. The group goes into areas affected by natural disaster and coordinates with local governments and faith-based organizations to assess need and deploy volunteers where they can be most effective.
“Some are high school or college kids who come to help on a random Saturday or for a few days during fall break,” she writes. “Some are recent college graduates taking time off while trying to figure out what to do next. Some are middle aged or older people who leave their jobs and families for weeks or months at a time. Each has an extraordinary story. Their sacrifices are inspirational.”
One of those volunteers is Jo Dixon, a 40-something grandmother from London, Riegel says. Dixon tells Riegel that she quit her job as the manager of a retail store in the U.K. to join All Hands in Louisiana on Oct. 1. She always wanted to do something like this, but had a daughter at home and couldn’t take off. Now her daughter is grown and has a child of her own, and one night in mid-August, while watching TV in her London flat, Dixon saw a news story about the flooding in Baton Rouge and asked herself, “Why can’t I go do something like that?”
“I think it’s the hardest job I’ve ever done in my life,” Dixon says, adding that the work is well worth it.
Dixon and her colleagues work 10-hour days mucking and gutting moldy homes, of which there are still thousands in this area, Riegel says.
“They sleep on the floor of youth group hall at the New Covenant Church in Denham Springs, which is graciously hosting them,” she writes. “They spend their one free day a week doing laundry at a nearby laundromat. In the eight weeks since they’ve been here they’ve gutted nearly 100 homes.”
On one recent Sunday, Riegel met Dixon and some of those volunteers at a work site on Hooper Road in Central. The volunteers also included Jeff Kuhn, a student from Amherst College in New Hampshire, who’s taking a semester off to travel the country. Riegel says Kuhn decided to make Denham Springs his first stop and ended up staying more than five weeks. Also on the team was Jessica Keatin, who took a week off from her job in the department of environmental protection in New York City to “get away from the politicians and do some real work.” Keatin was supposed to stay just five days but extended the trip to 10, Riegel says.
Other volunteers came from as far away as Spain and Germany.
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