Sai Ram Dear Sisters and Brothers,
Loving Sairam to you all. Hope you and your families are staying safe and healthy with Swami's grace.
As you all are aware, the state of Louisiana had been greatly impacted by the Category 4 Hurricanes Ida. This is an update on the disaster relief efforts to help our brothers and sisters suffering the aftermath of Hurricane Ida.
- A core team consisting of NDRT Team, officers and volunteers from centers across the country has been established. They have identified large unmet need that justifies transitioning this Service Initiative into a National Effort.
- Several members of the core team have made 2 trips to Louisiana driving over 7-9 hours each way from Austin, Dallas, Houston and New Orleans areas to assess the needs of the community. Here is the short video summary of the trips that were made - https://youtu.be/g2GqfP2EEbQ
- Based on the needs assessed by the core team during the scouting trips, a supplies list of essentials has been put together.
- We have determined that we will make 3 additional trips to the area to serve the community including distribution of supplies during Halloween (Oct 31st), Thanksgiving and Christmas weekends.
- Teams from Region 10 Sai centers have made 6 visits thus far to distribute supplies to various communities.
- The supplies for the October visits have been supported by Regions 1, 5 and 10. For the next two distribution events, we would like to open it to all the SSSIO USA Regions including the Regions that have already participated. Participation is completely voluntary.
How to Participate in the upcoming Supplies Drive?
We have created a simple web-based application to manage all such supply drives for current & future needs. For supporting the upcoming supply drives, please visit the website - www.sairelief.org
This application has been set up with a rich workflow to help us with our supply drives and can be used for our center/regional events if needed. A short training video on how to volunteer relief supplies using the new application is available at - https://youtu.be/MPTkTiXRoaM
On the website, we have set up 3 events. Each event is aimed at serving one or two communities. We are praying to support all the communities listed for their supply needs.
