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Home GIVE IKE SURVIVORS A HUG - By Heber Taylor...

GIVE IKE SURVIVORS A HUG - By Heber Taylor, Editor, Galveston County Daily News

A million reasons to give us an Ike hug
By Heber Taylor
The Daily News

Published February 22, 2009

Does Galveston County need a hug? Ted Hanley, executive director of The Jesse Tree, (jessetree@aol.com) a faith-based organization that provides services to county people who need help, thinks so.

Like a lot of other county residents, he's convinced that the people hurt by Hurricane Ike have been forgotten. So Jesse Tree volunteers are going out on the Internet, hoping to raise $1 million from a million people.

The One in a Million Campaign has a kickoff event called Give Galveston a Hug.

After Hurricane Katrina, there was a huge outpouring of help. The rush to help the victims of Hurricane Ike hasn't been quite as spectacular. For example, the Bush-Clinton Coastal Recovery Fund, chaired by two former presidents, had raised $2.2 million through mid January, less than 2 percent of the $130 million raised to help Hurricane Katrina victims.

After Katrina, The Jesse Tree received $30,000 from donors to provide gasoline vouchers to help storm victims. After Ike, the group received $150.

To kick off the drive, The Jesse Tree hopes to have 4,500 people line the seawall from 6th Street to 61st Street to show the country the island really hasn't been deserted. A section of the seawall will be have life-size cutouts of Hollywood celebrities, who seem less interested in Ike than in Katrina.

The real fundraiser, though, is an effort to contact a million donors of small sums through the virtual world of the Internet. That's appropriate. The Jesse Tree is largely a virtual organization. Long before the storm, it had rebuilt itself using vans and wireless laptop computers.

Just days after the storm, workers and volunteers were sitting on the tailgates of trucks in San Leon and Bacliff, filling out applications with the Federal Emergency Management Agency online.

"Those were some of the first applications filed," Hanley said. "We never missed a beat."

The organization is known for keeping each client's case organized in the thicket of paperwork required by local, state and federal agencies. Its system of managing cases electronically has become a model for agencies in other states. That system is working. But, so far, there hasn't been a lot of money to help people who were hurt by the storm.

More than $800 million is coming to the region from a federal bill to help communities hit by natural disasters. Sixty percent of that will go to rebuilding housing. But Hanley said that two thirds of those living on the island before the hurricane hit were renters.

"All that money is not going to help them," he said. "This community slipped through the cracks."

Heber Taylor is editor of The Daily News. Heber Taylor (heber.taylor@galvnews.com) was the editor of my book BILL CHERRY'S GALVESTON MEMORIES, VanJus Press 2000.
Posted Sunday Feb 22