Hello, for those unable to attend our recent meetings, here are a few items of interest.
Our final tally for Hurricane Matthew Relief was about $255,000 plus thousands of volunteer hours (not logged) over about 17 months while assisting about 215 families. Let's all pray for a quiet upcoming storm season.
After completing Hurricane Matthew recovery we continue to receive requests for assistance from Dare Co. Social Services. In addition to the routine emergency assistance requests, we've been working on several bigger projects including roof replacements, floor repairs, and a house raising. These are all community projects with other partners. The Cape Hatteras Electric Foundation is one of our most important partners, along with Interfaith Community Outreach, the United Way, and the Outer Banks Relief Foundation. In many cases we couldn't complete the work with our volunteers alone due to the urgency, availability, or risky nature of the work. Therefore we sometimes must pay for some skilled labor. Attached are a few pictures.
However, we just undertook an interesting volunteer project. Since St John Methodist Church in Avon couldn't afford to contract the exterior repainting, we recruited volunteers to do it. Because of the restrictions on the use of our donor funds, we can't spend them on our own facilities or ourselves, but we can turn out the volunteers. Included in the volunteers were 5 bridge workers (PCL Constructors). They came and worked with us for a day to do the difficult task of painting the steeple and other high work (pictures attached). We're also grateful for the many other volunteers from St John, Avon Village, Young Life Hatteras, and our own loyal volunteers.
As you know this is our 40th anniversary year and we continue to add new members with over 80 on our roster, including a number of Catholic, Baptist, and unaffiliated. Our women volunteers are also very important to us. Many of our members aren't able to do the heavy lifting for various reasons, but find a way to help, even if it's just contributing to our Admin Fund which pays for things such as Food Pantry Utilities or other operating expenses. This helps maintain our 40 year old promise that all donor funds go directly to our mission of helping those who can't help themselves.
As we've discussed in the past, CHUMM is trying to adapt to the changing times. Our partnership with Young Life is a step toward impacting a younger generation. Although we aren't directly involved in addiction treatment we have helped those who are, and who are good at it, such as the Yellow House Ministry.
As you've probably seen, CHUMM has received a lot of positive publicity. We all understand that it isn't about us. But it does help us to help others.
One of our strengths has been our long term storm recovery work. However, we're also trying to improve our early response capability. As you know we've improved our leadership strength by adding several officers including an Operations Coordinator (Jim Scroggin) and a Volunteer Coordinator (Dave Kelmer). The biggest change was creating Early Response teams.
We had 35 volunteers for Early Response Training, including 6 team leaders. These volunteers have been certified by UMCOR, including background checks and ID badges. There will be opportunities for others to join them.
Our monthly breakfast meetings will start up again in September. But our summer cookout will be June 21, 5:00 at the Hatteras Pines Pool on Lost Tree Trail in Buxton. All men and boys please come.
Blessings for all,
Dennis, for CHUMM
252 305 4925
