To Texas With Love from Justin Gaffrey Gallery & SoWal Community

[Teresa]

A message from our friends at Justin Gaffrey Gallery in Blue Mountain Beach

SoWal Friends:

We need your help! We want to load up this van and possibly a trailer full of items to donate to the Texas Flood Relief. We are accepting donations listed below starting at 6:30 this evening. The van will be wide open for you to place donations inside. At the end of the week, the Justin Gaffrey Gallery will be heading to Lafayette, LA where the Cajun Navy 2016 will be accepting these donations and taking them to the affected flood areas ASAP. Details below:

Where: Justin Gaffrey Gallery, 21 Blue Gulf Dr. Santa Rosa Beach, FL 32459 (Blue Mountain Beach)
When: Anytime from now until Friday 9/1/17

Donations that are being accepted:
-Non-perishable food and cans that are flip top or do not need can openers
-Ready to Eat Foods
-MRE's
-Diapers
-Wipes
-Baby Bottles
-Already Mixed Formulas
-Baby Food Jars
-Pacifiers
-Shampoo for all ages
-Soap for all ages
-Deodorant for all ages
-Cleaning Supplies
-Gift Cards

Please do NOT donate anything used. Also no clothing or toys of any kind, just the Essentials.

If you have any questions, please feel free to call 850.267.2022. Thank you!!

Justin Gaffrey Gallery

 

[Kaydence]

This was posted to Facebook by Walton County Emergency Management. I am only posting it here because I think people need to be aware of it.

This was also posted...

www.cbsnews.com/news/when-disaster-relief-brings-anything-but-relief/

Many of the well-meaning articles we Americans donate in times of disaster turn out to be of no use to those in need. Sometimes, they even get in the way. That's a message relief organizations very much want us to heed. Our Cover Story is reported now by Scott Simon of NPR:

When Nature grows savage and angry, Americans get generous and kind. That's admirable. It might also be a problem.

"Generally after a disaster, people with loving intentions donate things that cannot be used in a disaster response, and in fact may actually be harmful," said Juanita Rilling, director of the Center for International Disaster Information in Washington, D.C. "And they have no idea that they're doing it."

Rilling has spent more than a decade trying to tell well-meaning people to think before they give.

In 1998 Hurricane Mitch struck Honduras. More than 11,000 people died. More than a million and a half were left homeless.

And Rilling got a wake-up call: "Got a call from one of our logistics experts who said that a plane full of supplies could not land, because there was clothing on the runway. It's in boxes and bales. It takes up yards of space. It can't be moved.' 'Whose clothing is it?' He said, 'Well, I don't know whose it is, but there's a high-heeled shoe, just one, and a bale of winter coats.' And I thought, winter coats? It's summer in Honduras."

Humanitarian workers call the crush of useless, often incomprehensible contributions "the second disaster."

In 2004, following the Indian Ocean tsunami, a beach in Indonesia was piled with used clothing.

There was no time for disaster workers to sort and clean old clothes. So the contributions just sat and rotted.

"This very quickly went toxic and had to be destroyed," said Rilling. "And local officials poured gasoline on it and set it on fire. And then it was out to sea."

Chris Kelsey, who worked for Newtown at the time, said they had to get a warehouse to hold all the teddy bears.

Simon asked, "Was there a need for teddy bears?"
"So, rather than clothing somebody, it went up in flames?" asked Simon.

"Correct. The thinking is that these people have lost everything, so they must NEED everything. So people SEND everything. You know, any donation is crazy if it's not needed. People have donated prom gowns and wigs and tiger costumes and pumpkins, and frostbite cream to Rwanda, and used teabags, 'cause you can always get another cup of tea."

You may not think that sending bottles of water to devastated people seems crazy. But Rilling points out, "This water, it's about 100,000 liters, will provide drinking water for 40,000 people for one day. This amount of water to send from the United States, say, to West Africa -- and people did this -- costs about $300,000. But relief organizations with portable water purification units can produce the same amount, a 100,000 liters of water, for about $300."

And then there were warm-hearted American women who wanted to send their breast milk to nursing mothers in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake.

"It sounds wonderful, but in the midst of a crisis it's actually one of the most challenging things," said Rebecca Gustafson, a humanitarian aid expert who has worked on the ground after many disasters.

"Breast milk doesn't stay fresh for very long. And the challenge is, what happens if you do give it to an infant who then gets sick?"

December 2012, Newtown, Connecticut: A gunman killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Almost instantaneously, stuff start arriving.

Tens of thousands of stuffed animals, donated to the children of Newtown, Conn., following the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, fill a warehouse. Most donations were sent away.

CHRIS KELSEY

 

[steel1man]

Item Collection for Hurricane Harvey Victims
All, I will be collecting items to be delivered to the Hurricane Harvey flood victims via the Justin Gaffrey Gallery. On Friday, the gallery will be heading to Lafayette, LA where the Cajun Navy 2016 (‘Cajun Navy’ En Route to Assist with Harvey Rescues) will be accepting these donations and taking them to the affected flood areas ASAP. If you would like to donate, please bring your items to our house at 85 Bluefish Street, Santa Rosa Beach. We are in the Brickyard - behind Dune Side. Our house is the corner house. We will have a container with a lid placed by the front door. I can collect on Wed & Thu only so please get what you can in the next few days. I have listed below the items that are desperately needed. Let’s do what we can to help our coastal neighbors!


Donations that are being accepted:!!!

-Non-perishable food and cans that are flip top or do not need can openers -Ready to eat foods,
MRE's (The Meal, Ready-to-Eat, is a self-contained, individual field ration in lightweight packaging bought by the United States military for its service members for use in combat or other field conditions where organized food facilities are not available). -
Diapers -Wipes -Baby bottles -Already mixed formulas -Baby food jars -Pacifiers -
Shampoo for all ages -Soap for all ages -Deodorant for all ages -
Cleaning supplies -
Gift cards -
Pet food (dry and wet) -Used blankets and towels for pet care (used items okay here)
-Pet collars, leashes -
Pet crates, carriers

Please do NOT donate anything used. Also no clothing or toys of any kind, just the essentials listed above.

 

[Teresa]

Justin Gaffrey Gallery recently coordinated Hurricane Harvey Texas Relief with a lot of help from South Walton friends and neighbors...

On Monday, Aug. 28th, Hurricane Harvey was still making its third landfall and destruction along Texas with 50" of flooding in many places along inside the Houston city limits. That morning Justin Gaffrey and Amanda Kaiser met and asked what can we do to help with this relief effort that will soon be helping our friends in Louisiana and Texas get back on their feet. Amanda spent many hours online researching and spoke to over a dozen organizations on the phone in Louisiana. She finally came across the Cajun Navy who were very organized with staging areas and already had a listing of what supplies that were going to accept and not going to accept since it was the beginnings of relief efforts and in many places could not get into the affected areas.

We felt we want to help, but be very cautious about not going into Texas without permission or escorts from the Cajun Navy and officials from local government personnel. That is why Amanda spent many hours diligently talking to organizations and finding where we could best help and involve the South Walton community to help also.

"Hurricane Harvey laid heavy on my heart, for I felt like I have acquired many friendships through our clients from Houston," explains Amanda Kaiser, Art Director of the Justin Gaffrey Gallery. "I watched the devastation taking place with all the flooding, and I did not want to feel helpless. Instead, I wanted to put our resources together to help the people of Texas as soon as we can."

That afternoon, Justin made a sign with a list of donations to accept of essentials for the Cajun Navy to be able to get to the Texas shelters once able to the enter shelters safely. These supplies would help with their immediate needs for the stores all around were flooded and unable to open their doors. These donations were part of the first wave of relief for Hurricane Harvey victims.

Once there was a game plan, social media postings circulated that included all the necessary details of which donations we are accepting for the Cajun Navy and which ones we would not be taking for the first wave of the relief effort. Justin left the van door open with a sign and instructions to leave donations in the van, that would be locked up at night. Well, it was not long until Justin, and his staff shortly realized they were going to need a trailer because the van could not hold the out pour of donations from the community.

Over the next few days we collected donations at the gallery, and by the end of the week on Friday morning, we had enough to fill one van, three trucks, and four trailers! At 1 pm on Friday afternoon, Justin Gaffrey, Jeremiah Campbell, Ronnie Stanley, Kyle Swift and Alex Dahl all drove to Saint Charles, Louisiana to distribute relief supplies. Read below as Justin Gaffrey describes their experience:

“We were to rendezvous with the Cajun Navy at the St. Charles Convention Center. The Cajun Navy directed us to a shelter in need in Western Louisiana to distribute supplies. The following morning we went to the disaster relief center organized by the Church of the King in St. Charles who were working in coordination with the Cajun Navy. We dropped the rest of our donations and reloaded our four trucks and trailers with relief supplies and stopped at the Delta Downs Casino where they added more donated supplies to go to Nederland, Texas. We observed that the supplies went to people in immediate need picking up before they had a chance to hit the table. Everyone in Louisiana and Texas gives thanks to all of you who helped."
-Justin Gaffrey

Since Justin's return from Texas, he has been working and completed a new piece very close to his heart named, "Help." This piece below depicts of all the different kinds of people in humanity that came together to "Help" Texas without any questions of their differences. This painting is so dear to his heart because it felt like everyone had put away their political differences for a common goal, to "Help" their human kind with open arms.



For anyone one who wants to continue to help, please connect with this link www.churchoftheking.us. This group is coordinated with the Cajun Navy, and they are running a highly coordinated organized effort to help in disaster relief. The Cajun Navy will be running a recovery effort now by assisting people to get their homes in order, and they will need items from cleaning supplies to sheet rock as well as volunteers to help.

Justin Gaffrey Gallery is located just along Scenic Hwy. 30A in Blue Mountain Beach Hours Monday-Saturday 10 am until 6 pm.

learn more:
justingaffrey.com

read Justin's story and look inside his gallery on SoWal.com:
SoWal Business & Shopping Guide | Justin Gaffrey Gallery

follow Justin Gaffrey Gallery on Facebook for updates on latest artwork and live art demos