Hurricane Katrina Relief Volunteers

The Best Friends Katrina Relief center in Tylertown is run by Best Friends staff but largely powered by volunteers. In the video at right, Francis & Silva Battista of Best Friends reflect on the power of the volunteer effort.

The volunteer experience is magical, exhausting, exhiliarating, often transforming. In the videos below, some volunteers share their experiences in Tylertown.

Caring for the volunteers means being sure they can eat, sleep, and bathe, as well as finding meaningful work for them to do. Meals are cooked on gas grills and burners outside and are also eaten outdoors. A new tent (erected the day after the photo below was taken) now shelters diners from the rain.

The kitchen is usually run by one volunteer cook, with assistance from whomever gets done with other chores in time to help put the meal together. It's all about teamwork!

The video at right, only slightly sped up, shows a typical dinnertime flurry.

Most of the Tylertown volunteers sleep in tents or campers.

But a lucky few sleep in the loft of the cat building, conveniently located above the kitchen.

Come on in and take a tour!

Each evening, volunteers sign up on the community white board for the next day's job assignment. At dinner, long-time volunteers are often heard recruiting new arrivals to work in their areas.

The photo at left shows both a full view of the board and a close-up of part of a typical day's requests and volunteers.

Transcripts and descriptions of videos

	Last update: December 8, 2005 Comments to: Mary Miller mlmiller@uga.edu Created November 2005 URL= http://www.arches.uga.edu/~mlmiller/project/tylertown/volunteers.htm
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