Hello, all. If you were at the meeting this past Wednesday, you heard about ROTARY RESPONDS. This is a service initiative of the Rotary Club of New Orleans (RCNO). Its goal is to assist when emergency situations arise so that help is received quickly and effectively by using the manpower of the RCNO and the expertise of its members.
Committee Members include: Jeff Hamm, Dottie Nelson, Monique Gardner, Brian Mora, Mike Bourg, Bob Heaps, Susan Simon, Ernesto Carballo, Jr., Peter Waring, Henry Lowentritt, Joshua Joachim, Randall Feldman.
We are working on a number of potential projects. The outline of one of them is as follows:
- Partner with a storage facility or company that has secure warehouse capacity that will commit to store donated building materials, tools, blankets, tents, children’s items, and non-perishable food and water, etc. The goal is to have enough merchandise to fill an 18-wheeler.
- Partner with a trucking company or business with trucks that will commit to provide the truck and personnel to drive to the disaster area.
- RCNO will supply personnel to load and unload the truck.
- RCNO will partner with local clubs, and districts, the Rotary District 6840 Foundation to determine who the merchandise will go to, e.g. families or intermediaries like the Red Cross. Top priority will be to provide support at local disasters. However, depending on the Club and the merchandise donors, food and materials could go outside the immediate area. The Club will create a policy for when and how this process will work.
- Acknowledgements. The Club will create a temporary use logo for the truck when it is being used. The project will be called ROTARY RESPONDS and will include the logo of the RCNO, the trucking company, the storage facility, and others as appropriate.
- Rotary District 6840 Foundation may want to take part by making grants for the merchandise.
- The RCNO will develop a promotion plan.
We are at the stage that we need to know the feasibility of finding free storage space. We estimate about 1,600 sq. ft. with five feet vertical. We can be flexible about this.
So, the question is do you know of some company that might have available storage area and partner with us? If so, please let me know.
Randy
Randall Feldman