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Facilitate the rebuilding of the community.
- Empowering the residents to help themselves
- Bringing resources from other churches
As the Gulf Coast transitions from Disaster Relief to
Recovery, our focus has shifted from gutting homes and removing debris to
rebuilding/remodeling homes ... an effort to get people out of FEMA trailers
and back into their homes.
Thousands of homes were either damaged or destroyed
by Katrina. Many homeowners found themselves under-insured, meaning
they did not have the funds needed to rebuild and still owing a mortgage.
Recently the Governor of Mississippi requested and was
granted a 6 month extension on the use of FEMA trailers in
Mississippi. If you recall, the trailers are supposed to
be turned back in to FEMA next month, Feb 2007. Presently
there are still over 30,000 FEMA trailers in use in
Mississippi. We expect there will most likely be another
extension to be approved since it is unlikely that folks
will be back in their homes for some time to come.
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The bottom line is this ....
people are not back in their homes, they don't have enough money to get the
work done, there isn't enough contract labor to do the work .... the
Church still has a critical role in the recovery.
Pathfinder will help the residents rebuild their
homes by providing workers and in some instances, materials.
In addition, we hope to empower the residents to help themselves.
We are intentionally focusing on a few homes to maximize the
use of our volunteers to get people back into their homes.
We have received training to do case work in an
effort to facilitate assistance from FEMA, the State and National Relief
Agencies, and from the Hancock County Long Term Recovery Committee. But we
also plan to solicit assistance from churches to provide volunteers, and in
some special cases - materials, to help achieve our goal of getting people
back in their homes.
"Back in their homes" can be interpreted in a lot of
ways. What we mean is that the people have a safe, secure and sanitary
place to live. They may not have flooring, paint on the wall, or even
all of the rooms sheetrocked, but they will have a HVAC system, a kitchen,
bathroom, living room, and bedrooms with doors.
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