Disaster relief is focus of new team

BY MICHELLE HERSHMAN, L’07

It has been more than a year since hurricanes Katrina and Rita devastated the Gulf Coast. In that time, University of Richmond students organized multiple trips to rebuild destroyed homes and communities in the region. Despite those successful trips to the Gulf Coast, students realize their work is not nearly done.

Last March, six students formed the Collegiate Disaster Relief Team after returning from the spring break trip they organized: Destination Gulf Coast. During that trip, nearly 50 students joined in relief efforts. While in Mississippi, the students expressed fustration that there is no organized, central relief effort on campus.

“When we returned to campus, we did not want our experiences in disaster relief to go to waste,” says Corrie Mixon, a junior leadership studies major and executive officer of public relations for the team. “We wanted to form a permanent organization for planning these trips.”

The students structured the team so that it can be replicated easily at other colleges across the country. It consists of six executive officers: administration, finance, participant affairs, public relations, logistics and service. The students also created 10 other officers to assist the executive team. Ultimately, the 10 officers will learn from and replace the executive officers when they graduate.

The team is committed to enabling students to engage in relief efforts and service learning projects during study breaks. College students are the perfect participants for disaster relief because they are not yet constricted by families and careers, Mixon said. 

Mixon’s fellow team member, Sarah Potter, agrees college students provide great membership for a relief team.

“I hope the team can be an outlet for students who lack the free time to serve throughout the year,” says Potter, a junior and executive officer of service. “Our trips are planned around collegiate breaks, which allows students to commit to service without a lot of schedule rearranging.”

The team is putting the finishing touches on a Blackboard site that will connect interested students with local service events throughout Virginia and neighboring states. The students were inspired to communicate information about small relief projects after they tried to get involved in Hurricane Ernesto relief in Richmond. As it turned out, the work required only a handful of people, and the team’s help was not needed.

“We want as many students as possible to have the eye-opening experiences that we did through our participation in Hurricane Katrina relief,” Mixon says.

Establishing the new organization has been time-consuming for Mixon and the executive board. Due to time constraints, the team chose not to conduct a fall break service trip. However, it plans local relief and an on-campus service learning event. On Nov. 1, it held a dinner and discussion on various Hurricane Katrina readings.

“We hope our events not only engage students in conversations concerning the enduring devastation that exists in the Gulf Coast,” Mixon says, “but we also want them to share their experiences and their vision for our new organization.”