This past Wednesday, executives from HP were having a conference in Houston. They finished off their event with a visit to our exhibit, 51.88” Art of Resilience. Geraldina, and I were available to talk about the work.

I know corporations love to find projects to partner up with, so I reached out to Jeff Schultz with HoustonResponds to get an update on what type of help is still needed. I was able to pass the information on to HP. HoustonResponds is the organization that I donated the use of my Harvey drawings to for a publication used to get volunteers to help with the recovery.

I have pasted below the information that Jeff shared with me.

If you know any corporations looking for a good project, please have them contact HoustonResponds.

Here’s a link that may be as effective as anything to answer your question:https://www.houstonresponds.org/farfromfinished. We launched the “Far from Finished” campaign to raise awareness about the unmet need. The 90 second videos have been especially effective in communicating that as they put a face to the numbers.

There are still tens of thousands of Houstonians who are displaced or living in damage or gutted homes, many of whom do not have the resources to recover.

I would say that what most of these people need is a community around them that cares and is willing to walk through the recovery process with them, as well provide resources to rebuild their homes.

That’s part of what we do, and our strategy is to accomplish it through building coalitions of local churches that partner with any and all local organizations (faith-based and non-faith-based) involved in Harvey recovery.

How people can help, including corporations:

1. Funds/resources: We depend largely on grants to fund repair, but those funds are beginning to run out. We are beginning to cultivate relationships with corporations to continue to fund the work, and HP might be an example of that.
2. Volunteer: Our economic proposition is that substituting volunteer for professional labor and eliminating the profit margin can get homes repaired more quickly and economically, and sometimes with higher quality. We would love for corporations like HP to consider send volunteers to help with rebuild projects.

HP