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HUS352 Hurricane Sandy FundraiserAdvocacy Statement: The Hurricane Sandy Fundraiser is a community supported all volunteer effort to provide financial support, blankets, and clothing items for the victims of this disaster. 2012Jason J. White on behalf of Esha StoverHUS352: Interventions for Families with Children -with Instructor Patricia Clark11/18/2012

Advocacy Statement The Hurricane Sandy Fundraiser is a community supported all volunteer effort to provide financial support, blankets, and clothing items for the victims of this disaster. This effort is a small gesture from members of our local community, toward an area that will be recovering for years to come. In Houlton, on November 8th and 15th, two fundraisers were organized to help victims affected by Hurricane Sandy. A few weeks ago Houlton HUS352 students contacted a local caf in the Houlton area about how to combine a fundraiser with the local eatery. Immediately after meeting with the owner and brainstorming about some ideas, she appeared very accepting of the gesture and offered her establishments resources completely. Joyce and her husband are the current owners of The Courtyard Caf located in historic Market Square at 61 Main Street in Houlton. This business is a popular local establishment that has been made popular by their soups, sandwiches, appetizers, entrees, wines, and dcor. They offer take out and have an amazing Thursday Pizza and Pasta Night! https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Courtyard-Cafe/197998468795?fref=ts

Joyce had offered to advertise the caf s spaghetti dinner as $12.oo a plate and donate other portions of the evenings proceeds toward the relief effort. In addition to her already impressive gesture, she also allowed us to place a donation box at the restaurants entrance to accept hats, mittens, pants, blankets, etc. In addition to the donation box at the caf, another box was also placed at the Houlton Higher Education Center lobby. Our plan was to submit all collected funds, blankets, and clothing items to the local American Red Cross office to use specifically for those affected by the super storm. In response to the effects of Hurricane Sandy, as of November 13, the American Red Cross ARC) has launched relief operations in 10 states, including the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. These efforts have included more than 300 response vehicles, served over 5.3 million meals and snacks, distributed more than 1.3 million relief items, and deployed 5,800 trained disaster workers. Volunteers bring supplies to the countless Yuri, 2, cuddles her new teddy, given victims waiting for relief resources in com- to her by a Red Cross volunteer, as the munities up and down the East Coast. Red Cross distributes relief goods to super storm Sandy-affected families in Atlantic City, New Jersey. November 11, 2012

In the two nights that we held the fundraiser at The Courtyard Caf we raised over $200.oo in proceeds donated from Joyce and also checks and cash that she received from many of her patrons over the last two weeks who wanted to help with the effort. In addition to financial resources, we collected over 100 lbs of clothing and blankets as well. The first night we received about a dozen pairs of mens pants and raised about $50.oo, so we are thrilled to now have multiple items to add to the total collected. The last day that we check our donation boxes we had also received blankets, womens sweaters, kids clothes, shoes, belts, sweatshirts, hats, mittens, gloves, and other sensible and thoughtful items. Living in Northern Maine, we learned that our local American Red Cross office is in Bangor -2 hours from where we attend our Monday evening HUS352 course via ITV. At the time of typing this document we have not scheduled a time to have our items or dollars picked up but this for an excellent reason. Ehsa Stover is still receiving even more clothing donations to add! Perhaps, by the time the presentation portion of this report is viewed by our classmates, we will have some final numbers to share. However, I was just sharing with my classmate that I was not concerned that we were still taking in donation items, I was very proud! That being said, I could say that I learned a lot during this project. One of the most surprising is that the paper and the presentation themselves became less of a priority as the project began to evolve. By that I mean that we were very concerned about each portion of the project initially. Looking back, after we decided on the direction of the project, it created itself and we were able to focus on the leg-work of the project. This was a great experience for each of us. I chose to write the paper and Esha chose to work on the PowerPoint presentation. When we were at The Courtyard Caf Esha created some place-setting cards to notify patrons that portions of the evenings proceeds would go to victims of Hurricane Sandy. I helped wrap some plastic-ware for the evenings to go orders and took pictures of the location with Esha. Esha created some excellent fliers that we handed out in each of our communities. Esha lives 20 minutes outside of Houlton (where Jason lives), in Island Falls. I decided to take the fliers to our local radio station (WHOU 100.1 FM) and our local cable company for some additional advertisement. Esha set up our donation boxes and brought in additional items from her town to add to them. In creating the fundraiser and the course project requirements we used multiple forms of communication and technology. We used email, phone calls, written messages, text messages, and meeting in-person often. I was happy to have the use of my child-like obsession with technology benefit the course as I was juggling many things with Esha over the past weeks. We sent photos, information, ideas, updates, fliers, etc between our laptops, smart phones, tablets p.c.s, and land lines. One of the other things that we realized in taking part in this effort, was that though this disaster struck our Eastern Coastline at the end of October, we were certainly not too late to help. People will be recovering from these effects for years to come and all forms of aid will make a difference to some family just as the teddy-bear made a difference to Yuri. Our sincere thanks go to Joyce and her staff at The Courtyard Caf and the Bangor American Red Cross offices and staff. Thank you to our advertising help from WHOUfm, Polaris Cable, The Houlton Pioneer Times, Paradis Houlton Shop N Save, The Houlton Cary Library, and The Houlton Higher Education Center. Images were supplied by Esha Stover, Jason White, and facebook.com/americanredcross .

Jason White Esha StoverHoulton Higher Education Center