Call for volunteers
A volunteer group has been formed here in Barbados to assist countries in the Northern Caribbean recently devastated by Hurricane Irma.
Founder of The Nehemiah Project, Ansel Watts, said the faith-based organisation is to be officially launched this morning in the carpark of the Wesleyan Holiness Headquarters on Whitepark Road, across the street from where they are storing items to be sent to the hurricane ravaged nations. And, he said they are in need of volunteers to ensure they can meet their goal of “rebuilding the north Caribbean, island by island”, which he noted is the theme of the initiative.
Watts is therefore appealing to anyone interested in being part of the relief effort to join him and his wife, Mary. He made the call as he explained that through their pastor, Bishop Andre Thomas of Divine Visitation Assemblies, they will be making contact with churches in the affected area to help reach as many affected people as possible.
“Our goal is to send out four teams – a reconstruction team, a medical team, clean-up crew and a chaplain team; the last team is to offer spiritual care and pastoral counselling to persons in the affected area. Volunteers will be doing such things as assembling disaster clean-up kits, schools kits, hygiene kits and baby kits, and then we will be shipping these things to the affected islands, along with fully assembled prayer stations,” he said in an interview with The Barbados Advocate.
Watts said they have already established contact with a boat captain who is willing to assist them in transporting the volunteers and the kits to the designated islands and they are hoping that they can get enough men to volunteer and be prepared to sail out come early next month. He explained that their intention is not to send any females into the affected areas at this time, and are asking that they give of their time to pack the kits.
“The first territory that we are going into is St. Maarten/St. Martin and we are only taking a skeleton team to take in some supplies and set up a place to accommodate the other volunteers that will be coming over the next couple of months. We are looking at 16 persons per team, that is 64 persons in total on a given month and initially we will only be going in two-week stints, so that persons will not get burned out. So when they come back, we want to have other teams to send out,” he indicated.
Watts, who did similar work in Grenada after Hurricane Ivan, said that given the length of time it takes to reconstruct, he anticipates that the programme will be running for some time to come – two to three years, and so they want as many people as possible to come and sign up. In addition to volunteers, he is also encouraging persons to make donations of items such as bleach, soap powder, bath soap, toothpaste, pampers, baby clothing, baby bottles, colouring books and balloons to keep the children in the shelters occupied. (JRT)