I just looked back at my last post and it has been a WHILE! Apologies... allow me to tell you what’s kept me busy not posting here.
For a few weeks after I came back from Joplin I did normal rotations, mostly in Potosi, MO with the Forest Service. I was based out of St. Louis for four days, working in the office on our website (http://www.americorps-stl.org/our-teams/education-team/meet-the-education-team/meet-ert/) and reviewing applications for next year.
The website was a lot of fun and it was cool to see potential members for next year - it surprised me how much I felt like I could tell about a person just from their application. After reading through their statements and references, I could usually tell immediately whether I was excited to work with this person, or if ERT was not going to be a good fit for them.
Also, update! During that week in St. Louis I finalized the move from my apartment in Shaw to another apartment in Soulard, where the AmeriCorps office is and most of ERT lives. I moved in with a member of the Education team, Kat, as well as two ERT girls, Amelia and Ali. I’m living in Ali’s room, which is pretty tiny, but she’s great so it should be fun.
I’m excited that I now live close enough to walk to everyone’s apartments and the office, as well as the grocery store, nightlife, restaurants, etc. One thing I looked forward to with city living when I moved here in September was not driving so much anymore, and now I don’t have to!
After moving the last of my stuff to Soulard, I flew to Greensboro, NC to present at a conference on international law at Elon’s law school. It was awesome to get a chance to present my thesis work on international humanitarian law in Sri Lanka again, but SUCH a change of scenery! It was a little funny to be back around not just non-ERT people, but academics and lawyers to boot. I was a little rough around the edges from living out of a sleeping bag and a backpack in the woods for the past few months.
Nevertheless, the conference bought me really nice dinners and a lot of wine two nights in a row, as well as paying my airfare and hotel bills. Plus, my research mentor-slash-conference-setter-upper, Dr. Crowe, mentioned that he talked to the dean of the law school and that I could probably get a free ride to go there, should I so desire. So that’s something to think about (By the way, a shorter version of my thesis was published in The Dialectics, a scholarly magazine out of Penn State Abingdon in the fall).
While I was gone in North Carolina, most of ERT left on fire rotations, so by the time I got back to St. Louis there were only about four of us left. Consequently, Abby, Lisa, Steve, and I served for the first few days of the week in Forest Park, St. Louis’s biggest city park.
This was pretty cool for a couple reasons - first, I got to sleep in my own bed (well, kind of, as I’m still camping out on the floor of Ali’s room until I move my bed over) and work on organizing my stuff in my new room.
Second, we got to go get coffee over our lunch break! Forest Park is in a cool area with a lot of neat restaurants and cafes, so it was a nice change of pace to actually go somewhere over lunch.
Third, the project we were actually working on was pretty fun. We were clearing a hillside of the growth that had developed over the last ten years or so (including invasive species) because some grant money had just come through to replant it with native species to create habitat for birds, etc.
A lot of the work was just hauling the debris to a woodchipper, but I got to use a chainsaw for probably about a day and half of work, which usually isn’t that much fun for me - I’m not a very good sawyer and I hate being bad at things, especially when people who are good at them are watching me - but I got to do a lot of the work on my own, without feeling to watched, which made me a lot more relaxed. Basically I got to just run around with a saw and cut down anything that wasn’t flagged to stay.
Fourth, the weather was great. That’s all. Beautiful, warm, sunny weather makes everything better.
About halfway through the week - early Wednesday morning (29 February), a storm went over St. Louis, and, unbeknownst to me when I woke up to it at 2:00am, passed into southern Missouri and wreaked a quite a bit of havoc (it’s convenient when storms happen on holidays because it’s easier to name them; this one became the Leap Day Tornado). The four of us served like usual that morning in Forest Park, waiting for a call that we were needed to respond to the disaster, until about lunchtime when we were asked to return to the office so we could get ready to go.
From there, we got what we needed from the office, packed our personal gear, and headed south to Branson and Kimberling City, MO that night. We met with several other groups who had been out on project (including one just finishing up a ten-day rotation and looking forward to going home... sorry, guys!) and two guys up from Joplin.
The next morning we split into groups for Kimberling City in Stone County and Branson in Taney County. I stayed in Branson, and while my teammates set up a Volunteer Reception Center (VRC) like the one in Joplin (which basically matches up homeowners needing help with volunteers willing to help), I got a donations center going.
I was set up with a Coca-Cola semi trailer in the parking lot of the Branson RecPlex (the community gym/sports center), where the Red Cross was also running a shelter for tornado survivors. ERT doesn’t run donations centers very often, so there was not a lot of guidance or experience available on how to do my job, and consequently I stumbled through it for the first few days... but it turned out pretty well.
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| I found this purple wig... That's how you run a Donation Station, right? |
One thing I will say is that the response was overwhelming. Especially during those first days, I was often just overwhelmed by the sheer volume of things coming in and going out. I tried to keep track of everything, which stressed me out, and then I tried to have volunteers keep track of everything, which sometimes stressed me out more... but I think I ended up with a pretty good system.
After the weekend I moved the donations center to a much-needed inside space at the Multi-Agency Resource Center (MARC) set up by the Red Cross at an old outlet mall in Branson. The MARC was set up to provide survivors with all kinds of assistance: legal, employment, paying bills, rebuilding, social workers, etc. It was great being based there and being able to provide that kind of one-stop-shop for survivors looking for help.
I was based at the MARC until Thursday, when I moved operations to a local church, Tri-Lakes Assembly, that wanted to take over as a point of distribution (POD). I showed them the paperwork I had developed and shared my records, finalized some calls and just like that, washed my hands of my Donation Station.
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| The Donation Station at the MARC! |
It feels good to be done with it, honestly. It was a stressful job, and the church has a lot more resources in terms of a permanent space and a large pool of volunteers to draw on with which to run the Station. I did, however, enjoy my time and learn a lot.
First, this was a very different experience than Joplin for me because my role was so different. Not only was I on the ground within 24 hours of the storm happening (there was a lot more adrenalin for me here than in Joplin!), but I was also launched into much more of a leadership role. It was very cool that the donations center was really MINE; I developed it and ran it and knew all the ins and outs of it. Sure, it was stressful, but I love that feeling of ownership over some part of this disaster response. It allowed me to feel like I was helping people much more directly than I had in Joplin.
I also learned a lot about leadership itself. Using trial and error to learn the mechanics of running a donations center was tough enough, but my real challenge became learning how to manage volunteers. One day, I had volunteers working the center while I did other stuff over the phone and on the computer (which I’m sure was necessary, but now I don’t even remember what it was).
I explained to one volunteer what I wanted done but didn’t really SHOW him what I meant, and then sent two or three more people out to help him and trusted that he would show them how to do intakes and get information from donors and recipients.
This did not happen.
It may be obvious to you that this is a bad plan, but whether I was just busy or really didn’t think about it enough, it was not clear to me that this plan would not go well for me. I ended up with a lot of items that were never recorded and a lot of people who took or gave things without being recorded. So that’s my system out the window.
Needless to say, I tried harder the next day to make it absolutely clear to volunteers what they needed to do. It was kind of neat to watch as each day, volunteers’ performance got closer and closer to what I actually wanted from them... so I guess I started to do something right, or at least better. In general, the volunteers I worked with were awesome, so I knew that any lack of direction was on me. Giving clear directions, especially in stressful situations, is a lot harder than I thought.
Another thing that I noticed: especially when I was busy and stressed, gratitude didn’t really click with me. I don’t like that. Someone would thank me for the donations they received or for doing my job, and my response was weirdly to either try to out-thank them (“No, thank YOU.”) or to almost brush it off. I couldn’t just say “my pleasure” and accept the thanks. By no means did I do this by myself; there are plenty of other people to thank, many of whom had roles much bigger or more vital than mine... but it was weird just the same. I’m not sure what to do about this really, or what I think of it; it was just a weird trend that I noticed in myself.
I’m on my way back to St. Louis from Branson right now, and overall, I’m pleased with how things went on my first real disaster. I successfully found places for all the donations to go where survivors can get what they need for free over the next few weeks. I transitioned the running of the center well and the church seems very competent to keep running it. I learned a lot personally, and I got hundreds of people the stuff they needed when they needed when they needed it most. I met some great people; volunteers, donors, and recipients. I wrote a manual and made up some sample tracking forms so that the next time ERT does a donations center, there’s something to refer to that will hopefully avoid some of the pitfalls that I found. I’m pleased, but it’s good to go home.
Hopefully the rest of the team will be transitioning the VRC to the local community in the next week and be home soon too. This crazy week or so has also made me realize how awesome my team is - they are so good at what they do and I feel like I can totally trust them after all we’ve been through together. It’s good.
It’s been an eventful few weeks, needless to say. Still angry at me for not posting since February?
xoxo,
Liz
P.S. For those of you who’ve heard of Branson before, you know it’s something like the Vegas of the Midwest. We didn’t JUST work while we were there, but got to do some fun stuff, like seeing the Hughes Brothers show (“the biggest family show in the world!”) one night and getting a free dinner at a 50s/60s diner where the waiters and waitresses not only stayed late to serve us, but also sang to us as we ate. The community was very welcoming and thankful, which was awesome to experience.
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| My new roomie, Ali being serenaded by a waiter |
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