From Jacksonville With Love
News
Jacksonville Beach, Florida
June 23, 2007: Volunteers rally to clean up the beach
FJWL volunteers don’t just sit around twiddling their thumbs, waiting
for large-scale disasters to strike; they keep busy with a variety of
local good-works projects. The volunteers, who won the award for best
organization representation at the International Surfing Day beach cleanup
event, included tots, teens, and the young at heart.
Enterprise, Alabama
March 9, 2007: Work gloves, hot meals, and personal connection
When Enterprise High School graduate Haley Krey learned that her school had been ripped apart by a tornado on March 1 and that eight students had died when a school hallway collapsed, she knew she had to do something. Working with the local non-profit organization From Jacksonville With Love (FJWL) she helped to coordinate a response when the City of Enterprise, Alabama requested assistance for its disaster relief workers. Over the course of two days FJWL provided over 700 hot meals, as well as snacks, drinks, and work gloves, to support the ongoing efforts of first responders.
Supporting disaster relief workers in the southeastern United States is From Jacksonville With Love’s primary mission, so working in Enterprise was not out-of-the-ordinary. What did make this effort extraordinary was the personal connection. Haley Krey has been a volunteer for From Jacksonville With Love since its inception. She and her husband Kenny, along with FJWL Chef Frank Phinizy, Paul Gregg and some other volunteers, drove to Enterprise with a trailer full of food and a mobile kitchen. Over the course of the weekend they each volunteered over twenty hours to nourish the disaster relief workers, who were still cleaning up after much of the downtown and hundreds of houses were destroyed by the tornado.
The mobile kitchen was set up in Enterprise’s mini-park, where several other non-profits were in operation. The park is located three streets over from where Haley grew up and just four houses away from Haley Krey’s grandmother’s house, which was completely destroyed by the tornado. “It was helpful to be able to go and give back,” says Haley. “To be able to be reunited with high school friends, to realize that there is a support circle that never goes away, these are the kinds of connections that start the healing process.”