I left work on Friday and headed directly to the airport to fly out to Houston for the UVSA/NAVSA Katrina Relief efforts this weekend. With two big pieces of luggage filled with baby diapers, office and school supplies, towels and other items graciously donated by friends and co-workers, I arrived at 2am in Houston Saturday morning.
Saturday morning I met up with the UVSA/NAVSA group of some 15 volunteers who drove in a van from Southern California to Houston to help with the relief effort. Frankly, the traffic at Hong Kong IV mall (the heart of the Vietnamese community in Houston) has subdued quite significantly. Most of the Vietnamese families have been relocated to off-site shelters, churches and temples, and the people who came into Hong Kong mall just needed to fill out FEMA applications.
We therefore concentrated on Saturday on just getting basic household items to the families. We went to Fry's and bought a ton of rice-cookers and delivered them to churches and temples. “Feels like a refugee camp”, I overhear someone saying, and I guess it does. Another sub group split off and was working with the Cedar Sinai medical center (that has sent a van to Houston) to help with translation, since they set up a mobile site right in the heart of the Vietnamese community there.
Yesterday, I spent most of the time in the office of the Vietnamese community in Houston to help with loading the incoming trucks with the tons of washing and toiletry items we have purchased. In the evening, we returned to Hong Kong to pass those out to the Louisiana victims.
Monday morning, I woke up at 4am local time to go back to the airport and flew back to the Bay area and directly go to work (and show up 30 minutes late into a meeting--oh well).
All in all, I had a “fun” trip. It's good to meet and work with like-minded people, and it's always fun to meet up with my old UVSA friends, but I nearly didn't get to do as much as I wanted to. I didn't get a chance in meeting too many families (because they were mainly off around busy rebuilding their lives or out at the Astrodome applying for FEMA money). I also feel that the volunteers that we had there were so underutilized. I guess I had a different picture in my mind with the many emails circulating around, but it seems that it might not be worth doing these weekend-volunteer trips. Let's just phrase it as such: I think the money spent on flying over there just for the weekend is better spent just as a donation, and then leave it up to the locals in Houston to coordinate the relief effort. We here in NorCal should worry more about providing housing and shelters, so I guess I will be working with my real estate friends here on that for now.
I am glad that the Vietnamese community is coming together and that people are helping each other in these times. While I was in Houston, the Northern California group was putting on a fundraising social on the same weekend, and as far as I know they have fundraised some $50,000 already!
More pictures here:
http://www.thsv.org/thumbs.aspx?folderPath=PhotoAlbum%2fHurricane+Katrina+Relief+Effort
http://christran.smugmug.com/gallery/799604