Monday, October 02, 2006

"The stories here are heartbreaking"


Kindermusik Educator Ginger Bennett spends one Saturday a month on a football field of a Jr. High School in Pearlington, Mississippi.

Here is why:

“Most of the United States is aware that New Orleans was damaged by Katrina, but to put things in proper perspective, consider that New Orleans lost about 6,200 homes while Mississippi lost almost 70,000.”

Pearlington, Mississippi -- Pearlington was a small community with about 900 homes. Since Katrina, only 3 homes managed to remain “livable.” The first comment most volunteers make when they come is, “It looks as if nothing has been done in the way of rebuilding.”

Most of the thousands of displaced people have no money to repair or replace their houses. They have not been well treated by their insurance companies (as I’m hoping you’ve heard on the news) and are waiting on promised rebuilding grants. I’ve only met three families who have received this grant money. Many people share a common story. What little money people collected from insurance was used to hire contractors. These contractors have since disappeared. Finding an honest contractor is not only difficult, but expensive. Since the need is tremendous, so is the price. Prices have gone up so much that people just can’t pay for all the necessary rebuilding.

What can you do to help? There are three main things you can do:
1. Prayer; keep the Mississippi coast in your daily prayer.
2. Send gift cards from Lowe’s, Home Depot or Wal-Mart. You can send these to my attention.
3. Send yourselves. We need workers.

1 comment:

Lucorico said...

The city of New Orleans lost close to 228,000 homes as a result of Katrina storm damage. While I understand that Mississippi was hit hard too, your figure on New Orleans damage is just terribly wrong.