On Nov 3rd, a group of AsianInNY friends left home before 9am on a freezing cold Saturday morning despite the inconvenience of NY commute to arrive at CAAAV office at 10am to start volunteering our time to help the victims and residents who have suffered the impact from Hurricane Sandy.
When we arrived, a crew of volunteers were already at the door and inside CAAAV office. All of us were assigned to walk around Chinatown and Lower East side areas to ensure that lights were indeed on in every building and to check up on individuals to make sure the neighborhood was not damaged after the hurricane. Then some of us started helping sorting out all the donations to deliver to Gowanus, Rockaways, staten Island and Coney Island.
After taking a 30 mins lunch break, AsianInNY volunteers moved to Smith Playground to help New York Cares and FEMA to deliver water and food to a few public housing buildings and senior centers where they are still out of electricity for nearly 6 days now. Power and electricity may have been restored in most of Manhattan but people are still without heat and hot water in the Lower East Side! Since the area is mainly comprised of Asian speaking residents so all of us from AsianInNY were able to utilize our language skills including Mandarin, Cantonese and Toishan to communicate with the elders who live alone and can’t get out of the apartments.
We ended our volunteer work at 6pm though the temperature was freezing but our hearts continued to stay warm. We spent an entire day knocking on doors and asking if the people have pressing medical, food, or water needs. It is sad to see some of the buildings still are without power and many elders struggling to live without basic necessities – we witnessed a 92 year old woman courageously climbed down and back up 13 flights of stairs to just get water. Hopefully, with our help, we can help New york city to rebuild slowly!
You can still help! Those who are not affected and wish to help, please visit below lists of sources to volunteer or donate: http://www.asianinny.com/?p=24436
How To Volunteer or Donate for Post-Hurricane Sandy: http://www.asianinny.com/?p=24425
Please follow us for more updates on Hurricane Sandy relief: https://www.facebook.com/AsianInNYFans
Leave a Reply