The Volunteers Are Here!

Our first groups of volunteers arrived yesterday afternoon!  One group is from Wisconsin and the other is from Illinois.  I will be having a lot more groups from up north this year because of my location.  They try to schedule groups so they drive shorter distances.  In Tennessee, I got a lot more of the southern groups, but since my county this summer is almost as north west as ASP goes that is not the case this year.

Things have been going well in our county as a whole.  We were able to find all 7 homes for our crews to work on this week, although it was a challenge.  And we will need to find 5 or 6 more for week two since we jump to 12 crews, and at least one of our current projects may be completed after this week.  Since ASP is new in the county we are still working on spreading the word and trying to gain more applications.  So as Center Director, I spent a fair amount of time set-up week trying to build up relationships with existing community contacts and make new ones.  Community contacts are usually non-profits in the communities where we work that already work with low-income families and are able to collect applications for us, even throughout the off-months when we don't have a presence in the county.  In order to generate more applications, we even went so far as leaving applications in the mailboxes of home that we thought could be potential projects.  One of the new contacts I was able to make is the Long Term Recovery Team (from the tornado) in Morgan County.  Up until this point, we had not really received many applications from tornado damaged homes (and still haven't received many... but are hopeful!).  The most we had seen was hail damage from the storm surrounding the tornado.   The Recovery Team invited us to attend one of their weekly meetings, so Logan and I sat in on the meeting last Thursday.  They seem to still be in the developing stages and are ironing out some wrinkles in their system, but it was very interesting to hear an insider's perspective on the recovery process in the county.

Our weekly culture night tomorrow night will be some speakers who experienced the tornado first-hand, so I'll post more about that next time!

Set Up 10 Days

This year ASP changed many things- one of which is that our set up was extended from 7 to 10 days.  Since I’ve been here I’ve discovered many things…

1.   The school’s internet restricts many of the websites we need, including gmail (keeping us from using our ASP e-mail)

2.   (… or really 1 continued) What a proxy server is.

3.   I don’t get cell service in the majority of Morgan County, including our center :(

4.   What a “Title 1” school is… Morgan Central Elementary is one of them!

5.   It’s a dry county, which isn’t all that unusual in the Appalachian region.  Whenever we cross the border to another county there is usually a store selling beer and/or liquor right over the line.

6.   We are pretty close to Winchester, the place where they make Ale 8 (a ginger ale sold only in Kentucky).  Can’t wait to go there on a Saturday or day off!

7.   We originally thought our only food options were Subway and a McDonald’s with the dining room closed, but since we have discovered many places to eat!  The Frosty Freeze has food and ice cream, which I’m sure our volunteers will be happy about.  We also found 2 pizza places, That Pizza Place and Little Caesars, and an interesting place called The Lemon Tree Restaurant

8.   There is actually a river called “Lickin’ River” in Morgan County

9.   We’re also home to Cave Run Lake

10.        Morgan County has one of the largest Mennonite populations in the country (we found them in Crockett, KY)

11.        Morehead is the closest city, the place where we’ll go when we need WalMart, Lowes, more food options, etc.

I have also learned a lot about the tornado damage in the area…

1.   A smaller tornado went through Index (where we are staying, right outside of West Liberty) a few days before the big one

2.   The big tornado that caused the destruction of West Liberty touched down for more than 90 miles

3.   It would have been an EF-5 tornado, but the mountains slowed it down to an EF-3

4.   It snowed the day after the tornado

5.   There was also hail surrounding the tornado, which caused additional damage to people’s homes and cars

6.   Still hearing different things about FEMA’s response to the tornado, for example, there is a house we will most likely work on that received some money from FEMA but doesn’t have the labor or skill to do the repairs. In this case we will have the family buy the supplies and materials with the FEMA money and we will provide the labor.  It turns out to be a win-win, since it creates more room in our budget for other projects, and they are getting the work done that they need.

7. The post office was in a portable trailer until TODAY when it reopened!  We set up our PO Box and the address (in case you want to send me anything...) is:

PO Box 576

West Liberty, KY

41472

Also, please like our center’s facebook page:

Facebook.com/aspmorganky

And check it for more updates on what I’m doing this summer!