News and Announcements
Saying Good bye to 2006
Date: 1/12/2007
Saying Good bye to 2006
Before we address where KA is headed in the New Year, we want to acknowledge the many successes of 2006. These are just a few examples:
We co-hosted Thanksgiving Dinner in Moss Point, MS for over 720 people! Each guest received a traditional and very delicious holiday dinner, non perishable food items, a goodie bag and the children received toys. We met friends we will never forget and loved every minute we were there. The volunteers from Restoration were the true heroes that day!
We re-roofed a homeless shelter in Moss Point. It is safe to say there were some sore fingers that day!
We helped several hundred families with various needs including clothing, office equipment, finding resources when the families thought there were none, locating housing and employment, food assistance, medical assistance and many, many other ways. This what all of our efforts are all about. How lucky are we to be able to reach out?
We sent over 75 Easter Baskets to needy children in Mississippi. And it is NOT easy to do this and NOT include candy!
We helped several families return home.
We found sponsors for over 50 families for the holidays. These sponsors went above and beyond and provided some fantastic holidays for the families. As special thank you for some amazing readers who had a Read A Thon and helped over a dozen more families.
We replenished school libraries and contributed back to school supplies. Those kids and teachers in the schools will continue the recovery efforts!
We offered a sympathetic ear and gave hope. We found and made many new friends and became better people for the experience. It was a two way experience---for every box shipped, every meal delivered, every phone call made (including some surprise calls from Santa!) helped someone in a small way. Have we mention that our volunteers re the best?
We could go on but suffice to say, we had a banner year. It would not have been possible without the help from our generous donors and our dedicated and hardworking volunteers. So please take a minute to show family and friends this list of accomplishments and proudly tell them, "I helped with this." When federal, state and local aid programs were ending, we continued to help and we made a big difference to thousands of people.
Katrina' Angels' volunteers and donors are the best there are--we had people helping in spite of their own losses, we had people work tirelessly through their own medical issues, we had volunteers put aside their needs to help others and work when they were exhausted. This is true giving and what makes Katrina's Angels exceptional. Working with Katrina's Angels is not a job--it is a vocation and choice to help others. Thank you all, we could not have done anything without your efforts! No one received any compensation, no one had a year end bonus, no one received a nice plaque. The only compensation anyone received was the knowledge that his or her work helped a family that was not helped yesterday and that is a claim not many can make.
Another important lesson we learned is to reach out to other organizations to increase our ability to help. We have established relationships with some amazing and very helpful groups that selflessly jumped in and with no regard to personal agendas or self aggrandizement, and made any results so much better. We have yahoo groups, we have bloggers, we have sister groups, we have resource coordinators, we have researchers, we have database people, we have media experts and we may not thank them as much as we should---but they are inspirations and heroes. Through their efforts and true desire to help, we have learned the value of sharing and working towards a common goal. You know who you are and we love you!
So Bravo to our volunteers and Bravo to our donors! You did good! Please look for more feedback from people you've helped later.