Taking from the Poor to Give to…Wait! What?

 

I had the privilege this past weekend to show some of my friends from home around beautiful Santa Barbara, CA. Amongst all of the stores, costal vistas, and restaurants I was able to show them and myself something that will stick with me the rest of my life. It has to be one of the best things that I have experienced in Santa Barbara since moving here in August, 2011.

As my friend Dave and I were walking down the infamous State street we were discussing the diversity that is in Santa Barbara, and I am not talking about race, I am talking about the variability that there is economically. You can see it all on State Street, as you walk along you will encounter some of the super-rich as well as the super-poor.

Now State Street runs right in to the Santa Barbara Wharf, and as we were approaching the wharf I was telling Dave that here on the right side of the pier is where what I call the “creative homeless” live. Dave looks at me sort of confused and I tell him that he will understand what I am talking about once we get there. We finally make to the pier and the first guy we see has created a mermaid sand sculpture that is worthy of its own art exhibit in a museum. I have talked with this guy before so I tell his story to Dave. This guy starts working on his sculptures about six in the morning every morning, and it is a different one every day because the previous one gets destroyed during the night by people walking by. Then he completes it just about the time that most of the tourists are out walking the streets, with his donation bucket propped up against the pier he engages with on-lookers and requests that they give a donation if they are going to take pictures or admire the art. This is what I was talking about when I said “creative homeless”, he probably makes plenty of money in a day to cover his day to day expenses.

As we walk on there are sheets laid out with messages on them and a bucket with water in the middle of them saying “make a wish”, there are others sheets that have a message that are a little too honest and say “Why lie? Just need money for beer!”, then there is a cloth laid out that is about one tenth on the size of the others and it reads “I may not have a big sheet, but I am new at this, please help?” We get a good laugh out of these and approach the last person. He has built the Pyramids of Egypt and has a sheet and wishing well for donations to collect, to the side there is a message written in the sand telling the man’s story and about his service to his country. As we approached him he caught our eye and started trying to engage us in conversation. He was waving his arms like he was leading a choir and asking us “are you part of the populous?” We decide to pay along and he asks where we are from and what our names are. Then comes the big question, he asks “what do you do for the populous, as part of the populous?” I try to play the question off on Dave but the man points at me and says “no, I asked you”. I respond and tell him that I work for the American Red Cross; he steps back and is caught without words for a second, he then approaches the pier and extends his hand up to the bottom of it and I kneel down and extend mine down to meet his and he shakes it with a passionate gratitude. I thought this would be the end of our engagement, but the he asks “does the American Red Cross need a donation?” I respond and tell him that we never turn down a donation, so he turns and runs over to his donations collection are scattered with change and one dollar bills and starts gathering. I am speechless at this point and just watching a man that lives under a pier and is looked down upon every day gather up what dollar bills he has laying out. He comes back over to me and I am still kneeling down and he reaches up and hands me a hand full of wadded up dollar bills, I take them from him and put the wad in my pocket, I shake his hand again with the same passion that he has first shook mine with and then Dave and I start walking on down the pier bewildered and amazed at what we had just experienced.

 

 

I have had a few days to ponder on this experience and I find it some cool to have been the one to experience this! I was in no way looking for a donation, but I found one, one that I will never forget and will definitely be the most gracious of the season. Someone who has basically nothing and lies under a pier gave a 12 donation to the American Red Cross that will go to help all different kinds of people, probably even some of the people that look down on him every day. This one man gave more of a donation than most of the wealthy families in Santa Barbara even contemplated giving this year. I hope this story has encouraged you and made you thi

 

Merry Christmas,

-Ben

Not Just The Day to Day

AmeriCorps NPRC is a great opportunity to experience something new and exciting in a place that is on the other side of the country. When I first applied for the job my main focus was getting here and being able to work on national disasters. However, you are not promised the chance to work on a natural disaster once you get her, luckily I was able to get deployed within my first month. If there are no disasters of substantial size, which is a good thing, you will probably not get deployed. My office duties are very broad and ever changing. There are some things that I do every day that remain consistent. Scheduling presentations in the community and finding volunteers to teach these classes is something that is ongoing. Another item that I deal with is scheduling Red Cross trainings for our region and the trainers to teach those courses. These two main items mixed in with a bunch of preparedness and emergency services work keeps me busy.

Outside of my main work duties are the AmeriCorps goals that must be completed every month in order to successfully complete the program. One of these requirements is to volunteer with another non-profit organization in the area for eight hours a month. I recently got involved with Channel Islands Restoration group here in the Central Coast Region. The Channel Islands National Park is made up of five islands that stretch up the coast of central California. The restoration group is focused and grant funded to restore the islands back to their natural state by removing all invasive species and reintroducing the natives. This past week I got to spend an entire day volunteering with the restoration group. It was a day that I would have normally been at the office in Santa Barbara, but because of the AmeriCorps volunteering requirement I got to take the day an d work on Anacapa Island, which is a pretty nice office space compared to my cubical! This was a great time to get out and experience what a totally different non-profit was doing in the community.

I really enjoyed my time volunteering with this group and I will probably continue to do so for the remainder of my term here in Santa Barbara. Just thought I would write a quick post and fill you in on some of what I have been figuring out along this journey. Stay tuned for more and Happy Holidays!

-Ben

PA…PA…PA…PA….Pennsylvania Face

I was just about to leave the office late on Friday September 16, when a volunteer stopped me to say, “You’ve been deployed!!” Next thing I know I was scheduling my flight to Hazleton, PA (their claim to fame is the town with the highest altitude in Pennsylvania). I was assigned to work as a Client Caseworker.  I felt that I was completely prepared for this relief operation; I have traveled witnessing poverty at home and abroad, I had taken all the necessary disaster relief and preparedness classes, and I was fortunate enough to be travelling with a seasoned relief volunteer. I was ready to get on the plane and pass out. Hasta la vista Cali, I’ve only called you home for one month!

After traveling all day Saturday (9/17) we drove (with other volunteers we met on the flight) another two hours into the mountains. I began learning that I was not prepared for everything… it is difficult driving small cars on steep rainy mountain roads! But it was what we were given and I was grateful for a bed when we reached the hotel. I couldn’t handle the smell of the cold hotel and for some reason the owners really wanted to make us suffocate the windows were screwed shut! Thankfully I was tired enough to just pass out for this night.

The next morning we arrived at headquarters, which was surprisingly huge! It was a bustling warehouse, with so many people there working for the relief operation. It was encouraging to see hundreds (if not thousands) of volunteers coming together from all over the country to fulfill the Red Cross Mission. But in-processing and waiting for assignments was no where near as exciting as the commotion around. The day was slow, yet the orientation update about the relief operation was extremely important and necessary to comprehend the scope of the disaster. Tens of thousands of homes and families were affected and several hundred homes were destroyed or swept away! Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee’s destruction was not given sufficient national news coverage. After a day of paper work and orientation updates we were allowed to go back home, but not after I bought a warm rain jacket to protect myself from the cold, rainy, mountain winds.

The next morning I was given my assignment for my first week. I was assigned to FEMA Disaster Relief Center #7, in Luzerne County. I was paired with a woman from Wisconsin who was also on her first disaster relief operation. The next four days we drove another hour and a half on the slippery mountain roads to rural farming and mining country. The area we were in was absolutely gorgeous and I had never seen rich fall colors before. We drove over the magnificent Susquehanna River. We were supposed to be reaching out to those who we felt could benefit from Red Cross services; but I personally felt that the disaster relief efforts were coming to the tail end of the operation since the floods had hit September 7th and our efforts would be only be minimal at this point. Over the four days we did not interact or collect information from a great number of clients since most people seemed to be getting back on their feet over the course of 3 weeks. Those that we did reach out to were in need of our services, and we were able to help out with getting them medical or mental health attention, extra meals or referrals for services they requested.

During this time in the disaster relief center I had a chance to speak with some FEMA workers who elaborated on the community we were serving. This was especially helpful since I felt I wasn’t able to interact with many community members. I found out that the county that we were in and several surrounding counties had a vast socioeconomic range. I felt that we were in a very rural, monotonous, isolated area but there were large mining and coal companies operating in this region. Some people whose land was fertile with crops was also valuable for the energy underneath their property. This allowed compensation to be thousands to millions of dollars!!! Although most of the community and land was flooded in this isolated area, there were many who were financially stable enough to maintain their properties.  This explained why I felt that the flow of people requesting help from FEMA or the American Red Cross was not equivalent to the expanse of the destruction. Although the rural county we were working in was economically diverse the families we aided were in need of a large variety of services. Secondly I found out that the Susquehanna River itself did not create the enormous amounts of destruction but the usually rippling creeks quickly overflowed with the storms’ rains.

My “go-to” story from this time is just a blatant reminder of the fact that America does not revolve around large metropolitan areas as much as we (or maybe only I) would have thought. One woman I was collecting personal information from in order to place a follow-up call had given me her 7-digit phone number. When I asked this woman her area code she started laughing, at my apparently naive question. She wasn’t old or senile, but she replied, “I don’t know that! I just gotta know those numbers.” It seemed that this woman had never needed to use her area code. This was a huge reminder that some communities and families in America today are still extremely close knit. Their needs and lives revolve within their proximity. We constantly hear about the globalization of our world today; however with this disaster relief deployment, I was exposed to an area of our country that is so heavily tied to and reliant upon its own self-sustaining community.

This first week I learned a lot about myself: I have no exposure to rural America, I have never seen fall colors, and I underestimated the importance of farmers and small town people. I really missed my friends and family but crazy enough free wifi is available even in the middle of nowhere.

Flexibility in NY….Part 2

After we arrived in Albany, NY we found a mass of volunteers at the local American Red Cross Chapter office who had arrived form all over the United States and were ready to help. As I toured around the office getting my bearings about me I encountered my favorite not so positive attitude volunteers, which I would be working with for the next week! (See part 1) My new acquaintances were still disgruntled that they had not been told what to do; the only problem I saw with this was that they were not asking what they could do to help, except to keep the chairs they were sitting in from running off.

Time passed by quickly as I was running around trying to help out where I could until my duties from bulk distribution were assigned. Finally, myself and two other volunteers were told to get in the car and drive south to a town that was heavily affected by flooding, and find a 53 foot trailer full of supplies in the middle of a field. You would think that this “treasure hunt” would be pretty easy, big white trailer in the middle of lush green field. However, this proved to be a very difficult task because someone was moving the trailer from one place to another without communicating it to the right people. With the help of some “trailer tracking” locals we found the trailer 30 minutes away in another town. Now our task was to inventory the ominous tunnel of supplies before we started distributing it in the community. We climbed, crawled, jumped, shuffled, and squeezed our way to the back of the trailer. At the end of the day we had inventoried all the supplies, and discovered that trailers that sit in the sun all day become somewhat like the climate of Florida.

Here is a short video that shows what we did:

Throughout the next few days we went to this same location and distributed the clean-up supplies in the trailer to the locals of the community. The flooding damage was a site to behold, it was hard to imagine that at one point the place were you were standing was once over your head in water. The town had some major damage, but the people of the community were stronger than ever. Full or pride; and a drive for getting their small town back to what it once was, the townspeople blew us away with their attitudes.

I Worked with the bulk distribution team for about a week, and learned a lot in the process. However, what was really drawing my interest on the disaster relief operation was doing public affairs; being a marketing major I knew that I would enjoy working on the public affairs team. Public affairs concentrates on the messages that go out to the local media, makes sure that high profile visitors are escorted, controls the spread of rumors and the overall moral of all the volunteers/workers. I cunningly squeezed my way on to the team by showing I could produce the results they were looking for and had a good knowledge of public affairs. For the next week I worked directly with my new supervisor in the field, he was a chapter executive from Georgia, named Jeff. A chapter executive is not someone that you see often on a disaster relief operation; Jeff was there to gain a better understanding of what the Red Cross does on this level and how he could better prepare his region if a disaster ever occurred there. I have a great respect for Jeff and his commitment to the work he does, he taught me a lot of things I will not forget.

 We started off working around the Albany area, but while we were in Albany Tropical Storm Lee was pounding the southern part of New York with rain. These rains caused the Susquehanna River to come out of its banks in the city of Binghamton, NY and displace many people. There was a shelter in Binghamton with about 1,600 people in it at one time, which was crazy to see! With direct orders from the supervisors we packed our bags and headed down to Binghamton to help with public affairs there.

During my time in public affairs work I got to work with a lot of cool people as part of my job! First, I got to cover a story in a town hit hard by the flood about how David Britton, the sue chef from the Food Network show “Restaurant Impossible”, was bringing his custom designed pizza making truck “Pies on Wheels” to this town and voluntarily feed the town for free. I went from covering the story, to stretching pizza dough for the rest of the evening. This was really fun because I have always wanted to cook with a chef who was on the food network! Second, I got to stand in on a briefing with Senator Schumer! This was cool just because he was a senator, but I am not really that in to politics so my supervisor had to fill me in on who he was. Along with meeting the high profile peeps, getting out in the community and making sure that the Red Cross was getting publicity in the right way was really fun and I would love to do it again, it will be hard to find that cool of a supervisor again though; thanks Jeff.

This is the picture with the Senator. This is also what my supervisor Jeff would call “strategic placement”

We soon closed out our time in Binghamton and headed back to the “Big Apple!” Our time on the disaster was almost up, so we went to New York City to finish up some things at the headquarters and to take half a day off to explore the city! I am glad that I got to see the city for a short time, but a short time was enough for me. There is always a mass of people everywhere you go; they could be surrounding two completely nude women in the middle of Times Square, who were the canvas for a “modern” artist, or they could be surprisingly quite and somber at the 9/11 memorial. There was a lot to see in a short amount of time, but I think we got it covered pretty well. The last day we drove down to LaGuardia National Airport and flew back to where we had come!

If there is one thing that I took away from this deployment it was the “Red Cross F-Word”, which is “Flexibility!” Being flexible is one thing that is key when you work for the Red Cross because there are a lot of people involved in making many ever changing decisions. Unfortunately, this was the end of my New York deployment, next is the Pennsylvania deployment!

Flexibility in NY…Part 1

When I first took the NPRC position with the Santa Barbara County Red Cross Chapter all I could think about was being able to get deployed on a disaster. However, to get deployed there has to be a national disaster; the more I dwelled on the fact that I really wanted to get deployed I noticed that it is horrible, and a little morbid to sit around and wish that a natural disaster would happen. Eventually I stopped wishing damage and destruction and various places and decided I would wait and be ready if something did happen.

It was not long after I started with the Red Cross that I get deployed to New York! I still had about a week of trainings left to do with the Red Cross. But they sent me out anyway. The process of getting deployed was crazy! I was called in the evening after work while enjoying California’s beautiful East Beach, and some volleyball. I confirmed that I would go; I was given a number to call to make my travel arrangements to be in New York City within the next 24 hours. After a long night of waiting to hear back about a flight conformation I finally was given a time when I need to be at LAX. A few others and myself all had flights out of LAX that day so we made arrangements to get transported. After a long anxious wait in the airport I boarded the plane and flew into Newark, NJ.

This is where things started to get really interesting. Once I had collected my bags I had a number written down that I was supposed to call once I landed and they would give me further instructions, for a minute I did not know if I was working for the Red Cross or the CIA…either way it was cool! During the call to the random number I was told that I needed to rent a car and drive to a specific address, luckily my phone did not explode after that. I nervously went to rent a car; they gave me a Dodge Charger! Even though I had a fun car to drive, the daunting task of navigating around and driving in New York was on my mind. As I was looking at the map and seeing all the interchanging and merging roads that looked like layered line graphs from economics class, it was almost too much for this small town guy from Western North Carolina to stomach. I sat and gathered myself inside the car, plugged the address in to my phone GPS, and finally decided that the car was not going to drive itself there…it was not a Mercedes, I set off on a crazy ride.

After turnpike after turnpike, a multilevel bridge that costs $8.00 to cross, and nearly getting killed several times I made it to the headquarters! The headquarters was all that I expected it would be…a mad house with ten million things going on at once. After getting oriented with the situation in New York and getting accommodations squared away I went to meet my supervisor. Once I got to where he was there was a group of disgruntled looking gentlemen that readily informed me to not get in any hurry because they had just been sitting and waiting all day. I was not offended by that because I had just been traveling for 12 hours and had come to close to deaths door too many times. We waited around for an hour or two together; my one positive attitude against their five negative ones made for a lack of productive conversation, but we bonded. Finally, we received our orders for the next morning, which were to get in the car and drive to Albany, NY. This area was hit hard, where as Ney York City did not get as hard as they first expected.

We then headed to our hotel for the night, which was located on 42^nd street in Manhattan! It was just not any hotel either, it was the Grand Hyatt located right beside Grand Central Station. Once I got to my room I thought that this Red Cross deployment thing was going to work out pretty good. However, this hotel was a very rare event as I found out through my other accommodations later on in the deployment. I checked into a beautiful room and explored a few blocks of the city for some dinner then retired to a most comfortable bed, which gave heed to some much needed rest. The next morning we got up early and went to Grand Central Station to catch a ride to the Headquarters and begin our first mission as “Bulk Distributors!” Part 2 coming soon!

A New Year, a New Team….The Same Blog!

Hello all blog readers and followers! My name is Ben King and I am the new Preparedness and Response Coordinator at the Santa Barbara County Chapter of the American Red Cross. Five other National Preparedness & Response Corps Members and myself will be serving in the Central Coast Region until mid-June 2012! We are all excited to be here doing our part to help fulfill the mission of the American Red Cross.

Like Carson and the other members from last year I will be making sure that we keep all who are interested informed on what we are doing in the region throughout our term. There is already a lot to catch up on and we will get a start on that pretty soon.

Goodbye, Adios, Au revoir, Ciao, Salaam: Carsen

Wow!   I can’t believe it.  Tomorrow is my very last day as an AmeriCorps NPRC for the American Red Cross in Santa Barbara.  I am truly going to miss all of the staff, fellow NPRC Corps members, volunteers, and community members as I start on my next adventure.  I will always remember and admire all of the amazing people I have met throughout my term of service.

Thank you all for taking the time to read our stories this past 10.5 months.  We hope that you’ve enjoyed it!

All the best, Carsen