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Louisville community pitches in to assist dislocated Gulf Coast residents
Volunteers help get Highland House ready for Gulf hurricane evacuees.
Photo: Mike Kirk, Highland Presbyterian Church
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Louisville, KY -- Church World Service's refugee resettlement affiliate Kentucky Refugee Ministries (KRM) in Louisville, KY, was founded by members of Highland Presbyterian Church and has its offices there. Highland's members are active supporters of refugee resettlement. So KRM Executive Director Carol Young was not surprised when the congregation also stepped forward to help evacuees.
CWS, the humanitarian agency, is working with its Miami Office and eight of its local resettlement affiliates, including Kentucky Refugee Ministries, in communities across the U.S. to provide comprehensive, individualized services to Gulf Coast residents who have relocated to their communities.
Louisville's Highland Presbyterian Church owns a former nursing home across the street from the church. The building's first floor is used for various programs, but the second and third floors were vacant.
"The church's pastor, the Rev. Dr. Fairfax Fair, came up with the idea of opening 'Highland House' to evacuees," Young said. The elegant, 100-year-old stucco building has a "magnificent dining room and 'session room' with beautiful wood paneling."
Highland Presbyterian and Temple Congregation Adath Israel Brith Shalom teamed up to enlist the participation of other houses of worship and the community at large.
"Every denomination under the sun was represented," Dr. Fair reported. "We got a temporary occupancy permit, and in five intensive days, 600 volunteers got 44 rooms on the second floor ready, scrubbing, painting, moving in 85 single beds and other furniture along with lamps, TVs, towels and bed linens. They assembled 44 dressers; repaired plumbing and electrical wiring; installed locks, and hired security personnel."
With funding provided by Church World Service through KRM, Highland Presbyterian hired Julie Hansen to ensure that evacuees' needs were met, both during their stay at Highland House and once they moved out into their own apartments.
From mid-September to mid-October, Highland housed 40 Gulf hurricane evacuees. Their number included an extended family of 14, who had fled Hurricane Katrina, and about 18 Hurricane Rita medical evacuees and their family members.
The church coordinated the community's outpouring of support, including provision of three meals a day, clothing, social services, outings, orientation to Louisville, and much more.
"The whole community jumped in together with a huge outpouring of love and support for these people," Dr. Fair said. "People brought in clothing and every meal, every day. They got children into school immediately. A community theater group put on a play for the children, and one Highland member took children to ballet lessons along with her own children. People donated new bicycles and helmets for the children."
Then Louisville residents helped evacuees move out of Highland House and into their own apartments. The last family moved out in mid-October, and 40 volunteers from United Parcel Service came in to clean and to box up the extra clothing. Dr. Fair said some Hurricane Rita evacuees were able to return to Texas, each with a suitcase full of mostly new clothes "so they didn't go back to nothing with nothing."
KRM also is working with about 25 evacuee families who didn't stay at Highland House, and is in the process of matching them with co-sponsoring congregations. "These are people who've just made the decision to stay in Louisville and who want the church connection," Young said. Some still need furniture and other household items.
For some hurricane evacuees, the reality of their loss hasn't quite set in yet, she added. "We're in the process of starting support groups for older evacuees. There also are some individuals with medical issues that need additional assistance. And we are concerned about winter heating bills and winter clothes."
Staff at the national headquarters of the Presbyterian Church (USA) in Louisville also have been supportive, Young said. As Thanksgiving Day approaches, staff donated food for the about 300 evacuee families in Louisville. "I have a truck, and will get the food distributed," Young said.
Giving priority to people most in need, the Church World Service program is helping hurricane evacuees sort out the myriad disaster relief programs; find jobs, health care, and affordable housing and furnishings; get their children enrolled in school, and get oriented to and integrated into their new communities.
"This privately funded program takes the professional case management and congregational co-sponsorship model that CWS uses to help refugees -- people fleeing persecution in their home countries for safety in the United States -- and applying it to help meet the particular needs of Americans displaced by the Gulf hurricanes," says Erol Kekic, Associate Director of the CWS Immigration and Refugee Program.
Every year, Church World Service serves tens of thousands of refugees, immigrants, and asylum seekers with case processing, resettlement, chaplaincy, legal, and other services.
National church bodies that support the CWS Immigration and Refugee Program stepped forward with special funding for the hurricane evacuees, and additional money has been raised as part of public appeals for funds to support a broad CWS program of assistance to Gulf hurricane survivors. CWS/IRP participating denominations are: American Baptist Churches in the USA, Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Christian Reformed Church, Presbyterian Church (USA), Reformed Church in America, United Church of Christ, and United Methodist Church.
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