Volunteers working with the diocesan Hurricane Recovery Office are happy with the assistance they have been able to give to evacuees from Hurricane Katrina now living in Arkansas.
Reflecting on the first anniversary of the storm Aug. 29, 2005, and the subsequent flooding, several case managers working with parish teams around the Diocese of Little Rock were interviewed by Arkansas Catholic about their ministry.
When Catholic Charities established its office in September 2005, it was founded on the concept that volunteers would be trained to do the intake for new cases and assist with the resettlement process for 1,000 families. From the beginning, Catholic Charities USA and others have been impressed with the model because it has extended the services the diocese has been able to offer. Currently, the office only has eight paid staff members, said Sister Joan Pytlik, DC, the director hired to establish office. Sister Joan previously worked for the diocese as the director of the Social Action Office and diocesan lobbyist.
Currently 32 parishes have active teams and all team members are likely to have stories of evacuees who lost everything and are starting over in Arkansas.
“We all think we have problems,” said Faye George, a volunteer team member and parish secretary at St. Louis Church in Camden. “Hearing these people (evacuees) I realize I really don’t have problems.”
Teams in smaller cities like Camden have been able to handle a few cases at a time and not overburden the team. However, to date, nine teams closed or are considered inactive. Some teams cited the lack of volunteers to operate as the reason for closing, Sister Joan said.
In Ouachita County, George and coordinator Nan Price are currently working with two families. After these families are settled, George said her team would likely disband.
“I think we are almost over,” George said.
Brigid Ryan, the regional caseworker for Northeast Arkansas and member of St. Peter the Fisherman Church in Mountain Home, said the seven teams in her region are often traveling distances and putting in a lot of hours to reach as many evacuees as possible.
“The volunteers that stood up around the state are tremendous,” Ryan said. “I can’t stress enough that these are volunteers.”
Because most of her region is rural, Ryan said she is often facing problems helping evacuees with issues of affordable housing and transportation.
“Arkansas has always had issues (with housing),” she said. “The evacuees brought to the spotlight the problems we already had.”
Ryan said new clients are approaching Catholic Charities every day. Some are just moving to Arkansas from other states while others have been able to survive OK for the past year but now their financial resources are gone.
“I believe there are evacuees still coming to the state and haven’t asked for our services yet,” she said. “Our office will be open until September of ’07 and I think we will be working up to that deadline.”
The teams were given $10,000 block grants to distribute to evacuees as they saw fit. The volunteers were encouraged to refer the evacuees to current services available in their community. The teams have been supporting people with funds for transportation, medicine and utilities.
The grants came from a diocesan-wide parish collection in September 2005. The $750,000 collected was directed to the office to distribute to parishes for evacuees.
Tom Fredricks, team coordinator at St. Mary Church in Batesville, said his team has been frugal with their money, getting a local psychiatrist and dentist to donate their services or reduce their fees. At the same time, Fredricks said he wants to make sure evacuees get the help they need from the diocesan grant.
“We are trying very hard not to be cheap,” he said. “The money is there to help people.”
Terre McLendon, team coordinator at Immaculate Conception Church in North Little Rock, is probably like most of the volunteers around the diocese. When she saw the devastation in Louisiana and Mississippi, she was “horrified” and she wanted to do something to help. She had another reason to get involved with the team for the past 10 months. As a young adult in Little Rock in the 1970s, her apartment was destroyed after a flash flood.
“We lost most everything we had,” she said. “We were starting from scratch. It was a major event for me.”
Like other teams, some of the Immaculate Conception clients were able to drive themselves up to Arkansas and came from a middle-class background. They came to North Little Rock because of family or friends or it was first place they could find a hotel room.
“They haven’t had to deal with the federal bureaucracy before,” McLendon said. “Some of them just needed help through the maze.”
Others had little income and property where they lived on the Gulf Coast.
“They just ended up landing here,” McLendon said.
Fredricks said the ministry can be difficult depending on what case is he working.
“It’s kind of like a roller coaster,” he said. “Some families are difficult to work with. And there are some people who are so good that you want to do more for them.”
Ryan agreed.
“It is hard work,” she said. “They get brought down. The volunteers get the brunt of their emotions.”
Volunteers said they are proud of the work Catholic Charities is doing and it has helped establish the agency’s name around the state.
“I love the fact that Catholic Charities has an outreach all over the state now,” Ryan said.
“I am so surprised that so many people know what we do,” Fredricks said. “They see that Catholic Charities is helping them.”
