By Susan Thomas, Assistant Director, Electronic Communications, Boston College Center

A few of the Center’s members have been talking about the Gulf Coast oil spill in our online Member Community, exploring ways that the corporate citizenship community can respond to the crisis. Most agree that assistance will be needed not only to clean up the area, but to help those whose livelihoods are going to be deeply affected. One person commented that this would be an excellent opportunity for schools to get involved in understanding and participating in activities supporting the environment.

Today the HandsOn Network blog provided information about their efforts to help in the clean-up, including links to volunteer organizations who are helping out:

“Since April 30th, HandsOn Network affiliates in the Gulf Coast region have been hard at work organizing volunteer response to the disastrous BP oil spill.

Catherine Gautier, Executive Director of HandsOn Mississippi, writes:

“Between our tornados, flooding, and the oil spill, Mississippi is working on balancing all of the mobilization needed to address concerns throughout the entire state.

One of our biggest needs right now is finding educators to come in. A major lesson of Hurricane Katrina was that there were not enough spontaneous volunteers educated on some of the hazards in advance of deploying to the field.  If anyone knows of some experts who could aide us in educating the community, we would be most grateful.

Also, we are in need of some mental health workers. Mental health ills still have not peaked in the nearly 5 years since Katrina, and this new disaster – just after so many people have felt like recovery might be possible – is mentally and emotionally devastating.  I have locations for trainings and sessions identified but need experts in both areas.

We need a couple volunteers to assist our office with developing content and handing communications(they don’t have to be on site).

Finally, we need one person to be dedicated to attending to the management of the oil spill volunteers, trainings, and events and to be the Hands On Mississippi Point of Contact.  We would like to put someone into place immediately and then to seek funding to turn the volunteer position into a paid one as funding is available.

There is a great deal of flooding currently along our beaches and harbors.  This has delayed some progress, but quite a few volunteers have been out cleaning debris to lessen impact.”

HandsOn Network affiliates and nonprofit partners across the Gulf Coast are working collaboratively to ensure the most efficient and effective response.

HandsOn Network affiliates in California have offered much appreciated support, lessons learned and best practices from their own experience managing the Bay Area oil spill in 2008.

Over the weekend, approximately 600 volunteers in Escambia County, Florida helped clean up Pensacola Beach and on Perdido Key, the County Commissioner responsible for that area said that over 500 volunteers were assisting in the clean-up.

The HandsOn Network blog post also provided the following links for those wanting to get involved in the clean-up efforts:

Florida

Volunteer Florida

Alabama

Volunteer Mobile

Mississippi

HandsOn Mississippi / HandsOn Gulf Coast

South Mississippi VOAD Disaster Response Conference Call Notes 5/1/10

Louisiana

HandsOn New Orleans

Volunteer Ascention

Volunteer Baton Rouge

Volunteer Louisiana

Louisiana Serve Commission Oil Spill: Volunteer Information

Texas

Volunteer Center of the Coastal Bend

Volunteer Houston

Tags: BP, disaster relief, disaster response, Gulf oil spill, HandsOn Network, oil spill clean-up
This entry was posted by Susan Thomas, Assistant Director, Electronic Communications, Boston College Center on Tuesday, May 4th, 2010 at 4:41 PM, and is filed under Center News & Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.