KATRINA UPDATE

[Dr. Gilbert Brenson-Lazan]

Dear Friends and Colleagues:

We all continue to shudder at the images of death, destruction and 
suffering on the U.S. Gulf Coast in the aftermath of Hurricane 
Katrina. Most of us are also dealing with strong feelings of 
impotence, sadness, anger and even guilt.  With every image I see and 
hear, I am reminded of the worst tragedies, natural and human-caused) 
that I have seen around the world.

At the same time we are heartened and proud of the thousands of 
people that are helping in hundreds of different ways, giving their 
time, energy, money, prayers and even a corner of their home to help 
the tens of thousands of refugees.  The question I have been asked 
hundreds of times in the last few days from people around the world 
is "How can I help".  Here are some immediate actions to consider:
    * First and foremost, take care of yourself and your 
family.  Please make sure that you have given an adequate context and 
explanation to your children that are watching these horrendous 
scenes on television, .  My daughter-in-law is an occupational 
therapist with children in the Houston area and told me yesterday 
that many, many children are being affected psychologically by the 
press coverage.
    * Many NPOs need volunteers for a host of different tasks. Anyone 
who is reading this letter has many skills that are urgently 
needed.  Check out Volunteers of America <http://www.voa.org/> or the 
CNN Help Center <http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2005/katrina/help.center/>.
    * Offer temporary housing to a person or family.  Take a look at: 
http://www.hurricanehousing.org/
    * Donate canned food, materials and especially blood (urgently 
needed in New Orleans) to your local Red Cross Chapter.
    * Give a donation to a reputable aid organization.  The Salvation 
Army and World Vision have the best record of use of funds.
The situation on the Gulf Coast is, in most part,  still in the 
critical and survival stage.  In the next days and weeks, 
however,  the emergent psychosocial needs of the survivors will begin 
to appear and the challenge to help them is enormous.  Although FEMA 
and many other organizations will have Grief Management and Critical 
Incident Debriefing teams working in the area,  they will not come 
close to meeting all the needs.

GFSC is coordinating several efforts to use its Field Volunteers  to 
train, prepare and mentor other professionals and caregivers in 
Disaster Intervention Facilitation (DIF):
    * Larry and Bego Meeker, with a group of other area GFSC 
volunteers, are spearheading the efforts in the Texas Gulf area with 
local groups and organizations to offer DIF Workshops different localities.
    * We have many new materials now on the GFSC website 
<http://globalfacilitatos.org> on Grief Management, Critical Incident 
Management and Caring for the Caregiver.
    * We have a dozen GFSC Virtual Mentors that are available 24/7 to 
support local professionals using our new Hot Conference 
audio-video-desktop virtual conferencing platform that is accessible 
to anyone with an internet connection, even a slow dialup.
    * We are in contact with other facilitator organizations such as 
the IAF and ICA to offer support to their groups as needed.
    * If you are a professional facilitator, you can enter the GFSC 
Mentored Pathways Field Volunteer program to prepare yourself for 
future volunteer opportunities.  For more information, go to: 
<http://globalfacilitators.org/VolunFormEnEs.htm>.
Finally, we really need a really insignificant sum of  money to help 
pay some of the expenses of our volunteers.  We would appreciate your 
help and you can safely donate online at: 
<http://globalfacilitators.org/donation.html>.

For more information or for any requests for services, please contact 
me at: <mailto:GFSC-Chair at amauta.org>GFSC-Chair at amauta.org.  We will 
continue to keep you posted and thank you for your continued support.

Warm regards,

Gil

*******************************
Dr. Gilbert Brenson-Lazan
President - Global Facilitator Service Corps
Email: <mailto:GFSC-Chair at amauta.org>GFSC-Chair at amauta.org
Website: <http://globalfacilitators.org/>http://globalfacilitators.org
*******************************************
Through the development and support of local networks of volunteer 
facilitators worldwide,
Global Facilitator Service Corps helps build the capacity of communities
to work through their challenges and create sustainable solutions.



*
*
==========================================================
OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
------------------------------
To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options,
view the archives of oslist at listserv.boisestate.edu:
http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html

To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs:
http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openspacetech.org/pipermail/oslist-openspacetech.org/attachments/20050904/4ccd42d7/attachment-0015.htm>