Katrina victims get help for the holidays

Karen Matthews

The Mississippi Home Again Relief Fund is issuing a plea for all individuals and businesses to help bring Katrina victims a vestige of home in time for the holidays.

Over 100,000 people are still living in FEMA trailers in Jackson County, Miss., alone. Mississippi Home Again is a nonprofit organization established by Annie Card of New Hampshire and Tammy Agard of Montana shortly after Hurricane Katrina that has helped over 400 families with door-to-door, no-nonsense relief.

The mission of Mississippi Home Again is to help as many Katrina victims as possible re-settle in their homes, but they cannot do it alone. Appliances and cabinets are some of the most expensive items that are still needed to bring people home.

The Massachusetts-based Citizen Action Team has made the generous offer to ship appliances collected in the local area from their warehouse in Methuen to Mississippi Home Again. The agreement allows Mississippi Home Again to receive significant shipping discounts on donated goods from the Northeast to Mississippi. The challenge now? To fill the warehouse and the shipping trucks.

Mississippi Home Again is looking for any new or slightly used stoves, refrigerators, washers, dryers and kitchen cabinets that Massachusetts residents would be willing to donate to their neighbors in Mississippi and help them get back into safe, functioning homes.

Because of Mississippi Home Again’s effective solutions, hundreds of families can now cook for themselves, put their groceries in a new fridge and tuck their kids into clean new beds each night. These donations will help them help the thousands of exhausted Mississippians still trying to get back home.

For more information, or if you wish to donate, please visit www.citizenactionteam.org or contact Annie Card at anniecard@yahoo.com.