2 Girls, 1 Car: Help the Rockaways

Trip #3

Branching out!

This trip was in coordination with another friend, Emily Bell Dinan, who is a Queens native and has family who live in the Rockaways. She led a van full of volunteers and donations to a church in Far Rockaway near Beach 19th street that is in desperate need of supplies. While this particular area of the island has not experienced as much flooding, there is the problem of many handicapped residents, elderly folks, and mothers with infants who are having a hard time accessing donations because they live in high-rise buildings. Lack of power has eliminated elevator use, and most are without cars. This makes it extremely difficult to reach donation centers. To solve this problem a group of young locals have gotten together at their church, Dios Iglesia de la Profecia, and are making individual kits to deliver on foot to homebound residents. These kits are filled with baby supplies, food, water, sanitary products, children’s medicine, etc. With your help we were able to give another $1400 worth of specially requested supplies to the church! They seemed most excited about the baby stuff and all those socks, mittens, and headlamps – New York City and the surrounding area was hit by a Nor’easter storm two nights ago that brought heavy snow and cold winds. Keeping people warm is a growing concern.

Onward, ho!

November:

Trip #2!

Thanks to all of your generous donations, Yael and I were able to take a second load of supplies from Costco down to The Rockaways. For this trip we refined our shopping list with input from fellow friends who have been volunteering, and our own first hand experience trip #1. We also noticed a need for clothing due to the plummeting temperatures (Sandy really seems to have brought that winter chill with it). We spent the money on diapers and formula, warm socks, hats, gloves, batteries, tampons, cleaning supplies, candles, and dry food. We also enlisted a friend, Katie Lease, to help us make and distribute about 300 ham & cheese and peanut butter & jelly sandwiches to residents along Rockaway Beach Boulevard. There is a curfew on the island because there’s still no electricity, so donation centers are shut down by 6pm to prevent people from being out on the streets after dark. Residents seemed grateful to have some bagged meals to shove in their pockets for later.

The difference between our first and second trip was striking. Whereas we were basically alone last Friday, by Sunday we saw volunteers out in droves. People had come to Rockaway to run donation centers and clean out flood damaged homes. Wahoo! Residents seemed to be getting plenty of hot food and water at all the centers we passed through, but were low on several of the items in high demand that we delivered - particularly batteries, diapers, tampons, and candles. Again these items went very quickly. We spotted folks from Occupy Sandy, The National Guard and The Salvation Army.

Part of this process for Yael and I, and for our friends who would like to get involved, is finding up-to-date information about what is really needed. No particular organization is comprehensively in charge of the relief effort, but a lot of individuals want to help with their time and money. Volunteers have turned to social media and other sites to connect supplies and efforts with families who most urgently need the help. People are calling us and saying, “Where do we go? What do we do? We want to help!” And we’re saying, “Errr…We have no idea, actually, but look at these websites! This group is organizing a trip down tomorrow! We’ve heard this woman is meeting at this address on Thursday to clean out a house!” There’s no one specific way to help. Everyone is sharing stories and information about what they saw and learned during their time on Rockaway. We are relying on trusted sources to make informed decisions about how to best to spend the money you’ve so kindly helped us raise, and how to get it to people who need it most.

Here is a short list of some of the websites we’ve been referred to:


Occupy Sandy
http://interoccupy.net/occupysandy/

Rockaway Emergency Plan
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Rockaway-Emergency-Plan/463945416990840

Rockaway Help
http://rockawayhelp.com/

Rockaway Relief
https://www.facebook.com/RockawayRelief

The Rockaway Youth Task Force
https://www.facebook.com/RockawayYouth

596 Acres
https://www.facebook.com/596Acres