YouTube - Gutting in Galveston TX

When I was putting together the video from this weekend, I found this that had never been uploaded from spring break. Enjoy. I will look for others.

YouTube - Gutting in Galveston TX: "A video from the BonaResponds Spring Break 2009 trip. Gutting a house in Galveston Texas."

Thank you from the SPCA

We received the following from John at the SPCA.

"Hi,
Just a note to thank the wonderful group that showed up to volunteer at the SPCA again this year. They helped us in many areas on Saturday, including fence repairing, laundry, overall shelter cleaning, and ridding the outside area of the winter's litter. Of course, dog walking was popular and it was really appreciated. I think at the end of the day every dog at the shelter got a long walk around the pond, and they were resting well by the time I left the shelter.

Please extend our heartfelt thanks to the group that came to the shelter.

Sincerely,

John Skadowski"

The SPCA of Cattaraugus County is such a good asset to the community. It is a no-kill shelter that is always looking for volunteers. If you get a chance, whether with BonaResponds, or on your own, please help.

And by the way, the Allegany Park and Shop has a collection box where you can drop off food, cleaning supplies, small toys, and towels for the animals.

Jen uploaded some pcitures from the Friday

Gargoyle Road
Originally uploaded by Nif.

Here is here whole set...it also has some pictures from Buffalo

Uploaded some pictures of today's work

I uploaded some pictures of the work today. We had over forty volunteers, which was not as many as I had hoped, but not bad. Work was in Allegany, Olean, and at Mt. Irenaeus .

Here the the crew from FiveStar Bank in Allegany is pictures painiting the pump house across from campus.

It should be noted most of them worked until noon, then came out and were the last ones to the BBQ. Way to work!

Here is the set of pictures--more will be added soon.

This weekend! come volunteer see BonaResponds.org

This weekend! come volunteer see BonaResponds.org
Originally uploaded by FinanceProfessor.

The Spring 2009 BonaResponds Local Service Weekend is almost here! about 20 jobs sites in and around the area. From Allegany to Friendship, Portville to Randolph. And from Mount Ireanous to Olean, from campus to Carrolton we have work!

Want to know the work? Putting in a new fence, cleaning up debris, cutting downed trees, helping with a roof, painting an elementary school, helping out at the SPCA, trail work at the Pfeiffer Nature Center, helping at a local church, several street clean ups, painting fire hydrants and street signs, and much much more.

Why volunteer? You can make a positive difference in the world, you can meet new friends, you can get LAP hours, you can learn new skills. You can have fun! Note, that while we are helping others, it is far from a sacrifice: ask the volunteers, they will tell you. You get out as much if not more than you put in!

This is our first local three day event. So we need many volunteers.

Friday we still need volunteers from 4 to 7.
Saturday we have positions all day from 10:30 to 4:30
and Sunday from 11-5:00.

We will be having a free BBQ after Sat and Sunday's work days for all volunteers.

Lunch will be provided.

Please come dressed to work. Ideally you have work gloves. If you want to work on a tree team, trail team, or construction crew I recommend jeans. And the weather is supposed to be nice, so don't forget sunblock.

And a special note to people with cars. We still need drivers! And if anyone wants to help cook for the BBQ it would be greatly appreciated!

Also bring cameras, we love pictures! Will be putting together a slide show/video to play for Sunday's closing ceremonies.

To find out more and to volunteer please see our website:


Remember BonaResponds is open to everyone. And while we would love you to sign up, we would even more like you to volunteer. So if for some reason you do not sign up now, still please do come. (but signing up does make our lives much easier :) ) So sign up now! Please?

BonaResponds' Newsletter

The following was mailed to all on our mailing list. Since many of you are not on that list, I will post it as well:

Hi everyone!

Lots of news!

By far the most pressing news is that The Spring 2009 BonaResponds Local Service Weekend is almost here! We have about 20 jobs sites lined up in and around the area. From Allegany to Friendship, Portville to Randolph. And from Mount Ireanous to Olean, from campus to Carrolton, we have work!

It is our first ever three day service weekend (in the past we had two day and one day events), so we need many more volunteers than in the past.

Want to volunteer without knowing anyone, then by all means please do so! See the help page on our website: http://bonaresponds.org/help.html

That said, it seems like some of you may want to know a bit more about the work. So here are some of the jobs: Putting in a new fence, cleaning up debris, cutting downed trees, helping with a roof, painting an elementary school, helping out at the SPCA, trail work at the Pfeiffer Nature Center, helping at a local church, several street clean ups, painting fire hydrants and street signs, moving an 85 year old woman, and much much more.

In addition this year we will be working with Liberty Partners to bring 35 at risk high school students to campus from the Olean area. They will spend the day in part seeing what college is like (a college experience component) and in part being outside. This latter part is modeled after the No Child Left Inside (NCLI.org) nationwide program.

Why volunteer? There are as many reasons as there are volunteers, but a few that may interest you: You can make a positive difference in the world, you can meet new friends, you can get LAP hours, you can learn new skills. You can have fun! Note, that while we are helping others, it is far from a sacrifice: ask the volunteers, they will tell you. You get out as much if not more than you put in!

This is our first local three day event. So we need many volunteers.

Friday we still need volunteers from 4 to 7.
Saturday we have positions all day from 10:30 to 4:30
and Sunday from 11-5:00.

We will be having a free BBQ after Saturday's and Sunday's work days for all volunteers.

Lunch will be provided.

Please come dressed to work. Ideally you have work gloves. If you want to work on a tree team, trail team, or construction crew I recommend jeans. And the weather is supposed to be nice, so don't forget sunblock.

And a special note to people with cars. We still need drivers! And if anyone wants to help cook for the BBQ it would be greatly appreciated!

Also bring cameras, we love pictures! Will be putting together a slide show/video to play for Sunday's closing ceremonies.

To find out more and to volunteer please see the help page on our website: http://bonaresponds.org/help.html

That is the most pressing news. We really need volunteers. Of all skill levels. From driving to cooking (no Brother Ed this time, so who will do the BBQ?), to roofing, to doing an inventory of new supplies, to working the desk so that late arrivals will know where to go. Lots of work and remember many hands make light work. Volunteer! Change the world!

Other important news:

1. Randy May from Randy's Rangers will be driving up with a trailer of tools for us. As many of you know he and his wife Debbie worked tirelessly in Pass Christian Mississippi for two years following Katrina. He is stepping down from the Day to Day operations of Randy's Rangers. As such he will be splitting his resources in three areas. A portion will be held in MS for future storms. A portion will be held in NC at another group that had worked with Randy's Rangers in Pass Christian. And finally a large portion will be brought here so that we can have access to the supplies. They will belong to the Rangers, but we can use them. This will dramatically increase our ability to respond to disasters in our area as well as help in our now almost normal local activities.
2. A group of Chicago area Bonaventure Alumni are starting a BonaResponds-Chicago division. They will be modeled after what we do already. As such they will have various local days in Chicago and hope to take part in our future trips as well. This is really exciting! Thanks to Tom Cullen and his group for being the lead. We'd love to see the same idea take hold in other part of the country.
3. We have continued to work closely with Hands On Disaster Response (HODR.org) While they are now in deployed in Arkansas and we can not help them this trip, we would encourage anyone who has the ability to do so, to please go work with them. Tell them BonaResponds sent you ;) ! WRT to HODR, three more quick points: 1. This semester their founder and Chairman David Campbell came to SBU and gave two talks to students. Videos of the speeches are available here: http://bonaresponds.blogspot.com/search/label/%22David%20Campbell%22 and http://sbuschoolofbusiness.blogspot.com/2009/03/david-campbells-presentation-to.html 2. They have an anonymous donor who will match any donation. Can't say enough that we are modeled after them and if you could help them out, I am sure some of it will help us too when we work with them next time! 3. Bill Driscoll Jr. who is their domestic operations director, has agreed to be on our board of advisors.
4. We have a totally redone web site! Jen scraped what we had and the new one came out amazingly good. Be sure to check out the timelines and pictures from all of the past events. see: http://BonaResponds.org
5. Bill Hammond of Bridge City and Galveston fame will be here this weekend. If you want to meet the nicest guy in the world (he was so voted after each of the last two trips), be sure to come this weekend. He will also be giving a presentation to the school of Business on Risk Management on Monday. (open to all)

All of this and I have barely mentioned our trips to Galveston, Bridge City, our Buffalo Day which was held last week in partnership with Villa Maria, or any of our almost weekly local work days. (You can, however, read about all of these at BonaResponds.org)

Clearly this amount of work could not be done without some amazing volunteer leaders. This year BonaResponds has had a team of them who have been active almost every week. Steve Gearhart, Laura McDowell, Rob Ryer, Jen Mahar, and Pat Power have gone above and beyond what is expected; they have worked through winter's cold and summer's heat and from Buffalo to Texas. Thank you all for the great work!!

Remember BonaResponds is open to everyone. You need not have any tie to the University. You do however need to be willing to work, have fun, and help people make the world better.

thanks!!

jim

PS..While we would love you to sign up before you volunteer, we would love even more that you volunteer. So if for some reason you do not sign up now, still please do come this weekend. (but signing up does make our lives much easier :) ) So sign up now! Please?

PPS. Feel obligated to forward this to others! Come on do it! :)

http://BonaResponds.org

http://BonaResponds.blogspot.com

http://twitter.com/bonaresponds

Pfeiffer Nature Center

This will kick off a look at some of the jobs we have lined up for this weekend.

The Pfeiffer Nature Center is located in Portville NY. It is a beautiful nature reserve with many miles of trails.

They would like 10-12 volunteers but this is only a partial day of work. You will be picking up branches off of the trail and marking trails.

They have three jobs sites:

The Community Garden leadership is Jim Holcomb & Joe Schueckler
The Eshelman Site leadership is Mike & Judy Patton
The Lillibridge Site leadership is Jeff McMullen

Volunteers should dress for the weather, wear appropriate shoes for being
in the woods, if they have work gloves, it's very helpful to bring them.

http://www.pfeiffernaturecenter.org/

I just spoke with them and the work day will end at 1:00. However, they would like us there as soon as we can, so this crew should go out first.

Ideally, if the volunteers from this crew can continue to work, they will then migrate to another job.

BonaResponds Posters

Kasia made two cool posters/fliers for our local service weekend. Please pass this around, print them, post then, hang them up around campus, around town, etc.

THANKS! and Thanks to Kasia as well!!!!

We need a BonaResponds leader meeting

We need a BonaResponds leader meeting this week.

Please email me when you are available. Currently are thinking 1230 Friday.

Agenda will be mainly concerning the upcoming local service weekend as well as to gauge interest in a summer trip.

Much work to do in the upcoming two weeks to prepare for the weekend. Need your help!

Local Service Weekend April 24-25-26

It will be our biggest ever. Not only is it 3 days (instead of two), but several classes are coming in mass, so we will have more volunteers than in past years.

What we know so far:

* we will be working along the Allegheny River trail, Friendship, SPCA, Olean Schools on Playgrounds, City of Olean painting fire hydrants and street signs. We will also be working on Bob's Woods and planting trees at the Mountain.

Other clean up jobs include Mt Herman and near the Catt County Nursing home (behind Tops). On campus we will be painting the rugby goal posts and working at the Fitness Center for Athletic Dept.

still looking for other jobs... if you have one that you think needs to be done, fill out this form and we will see if we can do it:

Celebrities who are coming:

• Bill Hammond is coming...he of Texas fame...AKA "Nicest guy in the World"
• Randy from Randy's Rangers is coming
• John Zimmer might be coming

Person who is most important to the success of the event?

• You! Volunteer! Be a leader. Bring your friends. Get involved now and help plan the weekend!

BonaResponds Buffalo Day!!

March 28th The Second Annual BonaResponds Buffalo Day!!

This year the work day will be in conjunction with Villa Maria College.

Basic idea of the day: We meet at Villa Maria, have a short meeting, go work at various sites (take lunches), return to VillaMaria for free dinner and all-hands recap meeting.

A partial list of jobs (still waiting to hear from a few others)

1. Bob Lanier Center-- Caulking Windows, cleaning inside and outside pickup
2. St. Brigid-Columba Youth Center-- stripping wallpaper, cleaning walls, painting?
3. Felician Sisters Mother House -- painting several rooms, setting up library
4. Sr. Josette Food Pantry --- cleaning and organizing on-campus food pantry
5. Cheektowaga Historical Society -- cleaning basement
6. CHC Learning Center -- cleaning toys, therapy equipment, classrooms
7. Kevin Guest House -- cleaning- walls, windows, etc
8. Moving Miracles -- painting offices, building recital props,
9. Villa SIFE Big Brothers/Sisters Carnival -- assist with running carnival- games, etc
10. Nativity Miguel Middle School St. Monica Campus -- cleaning, washing walls and baseboards
11. New Testament Church Youth Center -- painting, drywalling, patching walls for new youth center and computer lab

Tentative Schedule

Meet at Villa/Registration 9:45-10:00

Work Day 10:30 -4:00

Return to Villa; Clean up 4:15-4:30

End of Day Meeting 4:30 (with slide show from the day)

Dinner 5:00 ish

Transportation

There will be transportation to VillaMaria from SBU. Details are still being worked out on this (and depend on the number of drivers) but we plan on getting a school bus, have the BonaResponds Van and will try to get other vehicles too. BUT IF YOU CAN DRIVE AND TAKE PEOPLE please indicate that on our sign-up form below.


Open to all. Get your family, your friends, alumni, or people off the street who want to help others.

Sign-Up form
Here is a sign-up form:



Here are liability waiver forms for BonaResponds and we will have ones from VillaMaria up very soon (everyone needs to fill out each).

Group shot BonaResponds-Galveston

Group shot-
Originally uploaded by FinanceProfessor.

In spite of camera problems, we did get quite a pictures (and many more to come) online.

They are available here.

Logistics, Logistics, Logistics

It has been a day. From delayed flights, to traffic, to changing sites not once but two times. But it is seemingly a case of all is well that ends well.

The last volunteer just landed. I am sitting in the airport waiting for her. The two vans are packed but presuming we get back safely, it will be 36 volunteers in to camp.

The camp is down near the water:


View Larger Map




I will write more (probably) when we get back. Also be sure to keep checking Twitter. It is updated regularly throughout the day.

It is not official yet, but...

Just got off the phone with Randy from Randy's Rangers. As you may know, the Rangers have largely gone into hibernation waiting for the next disaster to respond to after serving in Pass Christian MS for two years.

Rather than having all of his tools and resources sit idle, we spoke of the synergies we could have operating with BonaResponds and other groups around the country.

So the current plan is to split his tools etc with us and a group from North Carolina on the condition that in the event of a disaster we would each be able to use the items (so for instance, we go to NC to help, the tools are already there, they come up here and the tools are here).

The handover will happen during our Local Service Weekend (April 24-26). In addition we are going to try and get groups that worked with the Rangers to come for a reunion and a work weekend.

Obviously this will take work on our part. SO PLEASE step up and agree to help organize the handover as well as the local service weekend--for instance, we need a place to have people sleep, shower, etc. , need to get more organized in the storage facility, need to contact all of the groups who might want to come in April, etc etc.


That said it is VERY exciting and a great opportunity to leverage what we do to make the largest impact possible.

Who we will be working with in Galveston

The C4C Relief organization index:

"Our mission is to provide first response disaster relief and recovery due to natural and man-made disasters . To provide a haven for those in need of fellowship, spiritual guidance, meals and supplies to recover and rebuild their lives. To uphold our core values of Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness and Self-Control.

We will accomplish this by partnering with other organizations, in order to make relief efforts more efficient. For short term volunteer groups, we will provide disaster relief training, accommodations and meals, and coordinate work projects in order to make it possible and efficient for these groups to help in relief efforts."

They also have a blog but it is not updated that often.

Here are some quotes from their website:

" There is great need and much severe destruction in Galveston, with most residences and residents of this city of 60,000 affected. This is not just a wealthy vacation resort area, there are all economic classes here."
*"We are currently scheduling teams and individuals for the kitchen, clean up and muck out crews, skilled construction, and camp set-up."
* "During our 2 1/2 years of operation in Mississippi, C4C/GKI served well over 1.5 million hot meals, served over 10,000 families through our distribution center, coordinated and put to work over 50,000 volunteers from short-term volunteer groups, housing 20,000 at our campus, worked at over 500 properties, and completely rebuilt 16 houses, 2 restaurants, and a counseling center."

We will be staying with the C4C Relief organization. I am not yet sure if they will be organizing our work or if another group will be. I am speaking with Vicki tomorrow (Friday) and will give you a much better idea of what to bring etc.

Oh and here is a map of the area.


View Larger Map

Notice Board announcement

Just sent the following in for the notice board:

There are still openings for the BonaResponds Spring Break trip to Galveston Texas. The cost is $50 and includes a place to stay and food for the week,transportation from Houston to Galveston, and BonaResponds t-shirt. You have to get to Houston (Flights have been running about $200). There are many time slots available. We will be helping to rebuild the area that was devastated by Hurricane Ike in September. You will have a great time and do much good work if you come!

See http://bonaresponds.blogspot.com/search/label/Galveston for more information.

If you have signed up but have yet to pay, the $50 should be paid by Thursday. Collection times will be announced soon or email Steve Gearhart. Also please fill out the forms that are listed on the blog.

Great day of work on Saturday

Saturday was a good day for BonaResponds but a better day for those that we helped! All told we had thirty three volunteers working at three sites. Much work got done at them all.

• In Conewango NY (North of Randolph) we helped remove over a decade's worth of debris and garbage (for instance maybe 500 styrofoam coffee cups). He had been living out of his car since the house does not have heat. It was/is a story that is worth repeating: imagine living in house that is utterly full of garbage. Much of the stuff is good, but just piles and piles of newspapers, bags, and everything else. Rats, mice, and even a raccoon shared the house with this eighty year old. And he had no heat, virtually no electric, and no running water since the pipes had frozen. Just a sad tragic story that in many ways is this year's Gerry who we met on the "big trip" in the spring of 2006. The house is still a mess when we left, but tons of stuff was removed and at least he can now get the help he so desperately needs. Here are pictures:

• In Allegany, a crew worked on drywalling and painting. They got one full room done and much of another. They also painted a bedroom and got the house closer to ready for the 69 and 91 year old fire victims who had lost their house. Here is a link to pictures from this site:

• In Friendship more of the woodwork was finished at Ed and Donna's house. The house by the way is coming along! Here are a few pictures from it. More will be forthcoming!