Help Communities Recover After Hurricane Michael

Warm summer greetings from All Hands and Hearts!

It has been a busy couple of months for our hardworking Florida teams. Rising temperatures have made field work a bit more challenging, but program staff members have been taking extra care to ensure everyone is staying cool and hydrated during the workday. 

June brought an exciting period of transition for All Hands and Hearts, as our “response” phase wound down, and our “recovery” phase ramped up! We will continue doing response scope activities as needed, but we are excited to be conducting repair work as well. In fact, we are eager to return to the Boys and Girls Club to complete some work in our recovery scope as their staff is working hard to prepare for the upcoming school year. We are hopeful that they will be ready to re-open their facility to the incredible population of students they serve this fall. 

Sometimes progress can feel slow on a storm recovery program, especially since we are cognizant of folks that have been waiting more than six months to find the support they need. This is why our teams work hard to build and maintain partnerships at the local level. These partnerships allow us to identify where our services are needed and create the space for collaboration (with Habitat for Humanity, for example) so we can maximize our impact on the ground. Beyond field partnerships, we feel it’s also important that we connect with the very communities that we are working to help. In just a few days, our Florida team will be hosting a BBQ for the homeowners with whom we have worked. Gatherings like these are a great way to reflect on the progress we have made, and also to show the community how grateful we are that they have welcomed us so graciously. 

To date, we have worked on 169 sites and impacted 701 individuals. As always, thank you for supporting our ongoing efforts, and for following our progress here on GlobalGiving!