High points of the week of September 28, 2019

Crossreach has now stabilized its main warehouse in the RAM complex by removing water damaged drywall and the last of the wet items stored there making receiving, shelving and filling bags much safer and more efficient.

To everyone’s delight power was reconnected on Thursday. No AC due to hurricane damage, so it is still a hot spot to work in but having overhead light rather than battery lamps makes the work much easier.

RAM has kindly given Crossreach more space so it can use two complete warehouses plus, on a temporary basis, the floor space in another. This week medical, cleaning and hygiene supplies were sorted and shelved in their own warehouse. This allowed for more efficient bagging of care packages which were handed out as needed with the regular food bags. The third warehouse space temporarily houses clothing and water.

Crossreach’s daily deliveries continued and Rotary donated about 100 bags of mixed food and hygiene supplies to supplement Crossreach’s own bag deliveries.

The Crisis Response International volunteers were terrific again this week making receiving and staging supplies go much faster. One of the CRI team accompanied local drivers each day on most delivery runs making multiple deliveries to Hudson Estates, Mayfield Park, East Section 3, Regency and Freeport Ridge subdivisions.

On Friday some of the CRI team traveled to West End with bags and found that, although the area was not impacted so severely as in previous storms, there are a lot of needy homes there. So much so that CRI did two more runs to West End on Saturday.

Delivering supplies to needy families in High Rock

Saturday was a regular Crossreach run day and the team leaders checked on the current state of affairs of our established recipients and also made notes on new needs in each recipient’s neighborhood. The teams also noted the exact location of each recipient on their smartphones using Google Maps. Ed Gibby has kindly offered to collate the locations so we can build a more comprehensive master delivery map. Each team took double the number of food bags they would normally deliver supplemented by pampers and hygiene bags all of which were gratefully received in Freeport, Lewis Yard area and the Eight Mile Rock settlements.

More food supplies are always needed so please check the attached list and help if you can.

Crossreach estimates that at least 1000 more bags were delivered bringing the total delivered over the last three weeks to approximately 2500.

Crossreach also estimates that each food bag costs about $40 to $50 each which totals roughly $110,000.00 value delivered so far in September.

Crossreach could not receive and distribute so much food without your kind support and the unbelievably, hardworking CRISIS RESPONSE INTERNATIONAL Volunteers

THANK YOU ALL FOR SUPPORTING GRAND BAHAMA and CROSSREACH

YOUR GENEROSITY ALLOWS CROSSREACH TO DELIVER FOOD AND SUPPLIES TO

MANY MORE STRICKEN FAMILIES IN NEED.

Crossreach Update Post-Dorian