Scout Executive - A Scouting Journey

September 01, 2017

"To Help Other People at all Times"

Hurricane Harvey Relief Efforts

As we all watched the devastating impact of Hurricane Harvey, we wondered how we could help?, What could we do? Thanks to the wonderful Scouts and Scouters living near and around the Scout office in Birmingham we were able to do a mini Relief Effort Food and Supply drive to help out.

With one quick phone call to Dave Wood, of Wood Fruitticher Grocery Company we were off and running. That phone call went like this: "Hey Dave this is J.T., we were wanting to set up a drop off spot so folks in and around the Scout Office could bring by supplies for families in Texas. Do you think you could drop off one of your big trailer's. Sure thing, when do you need it, if we could get it today we could get started. OK we will have it there shortly." So we opened up the drop off site on Wednesday, publicized on Facebook, let the local churches, businesses know what was going on and in a 48 hour period we filled up three 18 wheelers worth of goods!

Thanks to everyone who helped to support this effort. Please keep the good folks in the Houston Area and beyond in your thoughts and prayers. I understand that the scout offices in each of the affected councils weathered the storm.

If you are interested in helping out, here is some information from Scouting Wire:

Emergency resources are already stretched in affected areas, so the most important way to serve these communities is to respond to what authorities are asking for in terms of support.

While the immediate reaction of the Scouting community may be to provide hands-on support, right now, the best way to help is to offer financial support to those whose homes—and lives—have been affected by the tropical storm.

The councils that have been significantly impacted include Sam Houston Area Council (Houston), Three Rivers Council (Beaumont), Bay Area Council (Galveston), and South Texas Council (Corpus Christi), as well as counties within the Alamo Area (San Antonio), Capitol Area (Austin), and Calcasieu Area (Lake Charles) councils. If you would like to help support one of the councils affected by Hurricane Harvey, you can make a donation here.

To contribute to immediate relief efforts, donations can be made to the Red Cross and Salvation Army.

American Red Cross: Donate online at RedCross.org, call 1-800-RED CROSS or text HARVEY to 90999 to make a $10 donation.
Salvation Army: Donate online at HelpSalvationArmy.org; by phone at 1-800-SAL-ARMY; or via mail to: The Salvation Army, P.O. Box 1959, Atlanta GA 30301

Special thanks to all of our scouting units who helped out, special thanks to the Scouts from Troop 76, Troop 320 and Venturing Crew 2010 who helped organize and sort on Thursday and Friday. Thanks to other's like Chris Morhard, former scoutmaster of Troop 76 who was dropping off Friday morning and stayed for a while with the sorting, thanks to Board Member George Elliott who brought by a trailer full of stuff and then stayed to help sort, thanks to Board Chair Dave Wood, who got us the trucks, pallets, boxes, and helped sort on Thursday and Friday. Thanks to Liberty Crossings United Methodist Church, Liberty Park Elementary School and Liberty Park Middle School who quickly got the word out in the community. And most of all thanks to all of you who took the time to empty your cabinets, made trips to the grocery store and dropped off thousands of pounds of food and supplies! Special thanks to the staff of the Greater Alabama Council, who between all the other duties as assigned by the Scout Executive pitched in to unload cars, sort cans, box up stuff, run get supplies, you name they did it! What a great bunch of folks I get to work with!