Lions have donated more than US$1.5 million so far for Hurricane Katrina relief. Every day LCIF also receives numerous reports of how Lions nationwide are assisting the relief effort. Hundreds, if not thousands, of clubs have collected and transported goods, provided services for evacuees, raised funds or even traveled to the Gulf Coast to lend a hand. Here are just a few examples.

• A 14-person Lions Disaster team from Nevada and California loaded up pickup trucks and motor homes with food, clothing and supplies, headed east to Mississippi and set up a central command post at the Gulfport Lions Deaf Center. Quickly realizing that families in need had no way to come to them, the Lions broke up into four-person teams and traveled deep into rural areas to deliver supplies. Grateful recipients said the Lions were the first relief personnel they had seen. The Lions, who had to battle hordes of nasty mosquitoes, also helped the distressed residents with debris removal.
• The daughter of Past International Director Jack Weber persuaded her students at a Long Island, New York, school to donate the funds they raised for Katrina victims to LCIF. The amount is expected to be several thousand dollars.
• The Waverly Lions Club in Iowa is gathering 1,000 pounds of construction-related tools and supplies such as hammers, saws, nails and screwdrivers for a Lions warehouse in Mobile, Ala., that is serving hurricane victims. Other clubs in the Waverly Club's zone were challenged to match that amount.
• Spearheaded by the Liberty Lions Club, many Lions clubs in Indiana filled a semi-tractor truck with food, clothing, baby supplies and toilet paper and had a trucker drive it to the Lions' warehouse in Mobile.
• Lions from District 2-S2 in the Houston area provided vision screenings for 3,000 evacuees at the Reliant Center and the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston. About 2,000 of those screened were fitted with replacement eyeglasses. LensCrafters and Wal-Mart partnered with Lions on the Lions Eyeglasses for Katrina Evacuees Project. The Lions Eye Bank of Texas trailer is now being used to reach evacuees in other locations who may need eyeglasses.

LCIF also is moving ahead with assistance to those affected by Katrina. The steering committee for hurricane relief arranged for a mobile eye van belonging to the Alabama Lions to provide vision exams and dispense eyeglasses in Mississippi. Vision Service Plan (VSP) has generously agreed to provide optometrists to staff the van (in addition to volunteer Lions), and the University of Alabama-Birmingham is providing the necessary equipment. Uncovered expenses will be paid for by LCIF from the US$200,000 Major Catastrophe grant it previously awarded. Undoubtedly, this project will not only help people with their eyeglass needs but also uncover eye disease in its early stage and prevent blindness.

Lions also have provided children in Mississippi whose schools were destroyed with a "school in a box," a UNICEF kit with school materials and supplies. Lions delivered 23 kits, each of which serves 80 children, to the St. Martin school district, which had two of its three schools destroyed, and Bay Waveland school district, which has only one school open out of six. The kits contain 39 kinds of school items including books, pencils, erasers, scissors, chalkboards, plastic cubes for counting and a set of three laminated posters (alphabet and multiplication and number tables). The kit allows a teacher to establish a makeshift classroom almost anywhere.

The school superintendents who received the kits "expressed their deep appreciation for our efforts and asked that we keep them in our prayers," said International Director Howard Jenkins of Mississippi, who, along with Past International Directors Al Brandel of New York and Lowell Bonds of Alabama, spearheaded the effort to help the schoolchildren. Jenkins and Bonds serve on the steering committee set up by LCIF to coordinate Katrina relief. The school kit operation is the first time the U.S. government permitted UNICEF to aid in an American disaster. Lions are one of only four distribution organizations.

After the hurricane, many Lions in heavily damaged Districts 8-S and 8-N in Louisiana evacuated their homes as did the general population. Lions able to do service did their part. Lions in 8-N, which includes Baton Rouge, distributed LCIF-funded vouchers to victims for food and looked after those needing oxygen or otherwise having special medical needs.

Louisiana Lions in 8-L, several hours north of New Orleans and generally not directly touched by the disaster, helped take care of thousands of displaced people who left New Orleans and other places before the hurricane hit.

I’ve never seen anything like this in my life and I never want to see it again,” said District Governor Ann Sanders of 8-L. “People came here with only the clothes on their back. We have babies who need diapers and food.”

Lions in her district have quickly collected several thousand dollars so far to assist the refugees, said Sanders. Lions from Connecticut, Massachusetts and Maine have called her to offer help. The Lion from Maine who called is coordinating a shipment of two 18-wheelers of supplies. A Lion from Lafayette, La., is driving over with a car full of meat.

Lions are assisting at improvised non-Red Cross shelters that have sprung up. Lions also are helping out at larger venues such as the gym at Louisiana State University in Shreveport, which is holding some 2,000 displaced people.

Some Lions have opened shelters in their capacity as a state or government employee. Vice District Governor Dinah Landry of 8-O is housing 500 displaced people in Cameron Parish, where she is head of the Council for Aging.

The Louisiana Lions Children’s Camp in Leesville is housing and feeding 114 people who fled north from New Orleans before Katrina hit. Half of them are Lions themselves. Just because they are displaced does not mean they are forgetting about their identity as Lions “They’ve kept busy. They’ve cleaned the campgrounds,” said Ray Cecil, camp director. “They’re refugees who’ve lost their homes and livelihood but they’ve been busy the whole time they’ve been here.”

Lions are filling the unmet needs they come across. The Opelousas Club and Carencro Club in Louisiana are helping people get drug prescriptions filled. The Grandlake-Sweetlake Club has helped churches put together packages of necessities for people at shelters.

Vice District Governor Nancey Farr of 8-N in Louisiana toured several shelters to assess the need. She discovered that the Judson Baptist Church in Watson had been converted into an instant maternity ward with 12 babies after agreeing to lend a hand to Woman’s Hospital in Baton Rouge. Another church operating a shelter built makeshift wooden showers outside the church and still another church shelter with 700 people was being visited by a doctor who was treating patients with embedded roofing nails.

At Faith Family Church in Watson, Farr discovered that 80 people were forced to sleep on pews that were unceremoniously pulled together. Farr arranged for food for the shelter residents and called a judge-friend to recruit young people to unload the trailers.

“I could just go on and on about the things I saw and the people that I spoke to,” wrote Farr in an e-mail. “Their faces, their stories … make you thank God even more often than we normally do.”

The ability of Lions in the devastated areas of Mississippi to offer aid to others has been partly limited because of damage to their own homes. “Most of us have to clear debris around our own homes, clean out freezers of spoiled food and take care of other household duties that could not be addressed during the power outages,” Raymond Roberts of Brookhaven, Cabinet Secretary of District 30-I, wrote in an e-mail to LCIF. Gas shortages and loss of communication services also has made it difficult to launch a coordinated relief effort, he added.

Still, the Brookhaven Lions purchased $250 worth of paper plates, cups, napkins and toilet paper for two local shelters and gave children at four shelters oversized coloring books it had been selling as a fund-raiser. The Wesson Lions Club has been staffing a shelter at a community college set up for emergency electrical power workers.

Gregory Crapo of Gulfport, Cabinet Secretary for District 30-N, reported to LCIF that “basically [there is] nothing left to this area. Very few homes and businesses survived. The majority of our schools and churches have been destroyed. Many parents are already relocating to get their children into school before it is too late. There are no prospects for jobs because there are no businesses left.”

Yet Crapo said he and others remain undaunted. “Each day is a little better as power comes back to those buildings that are still standing,” he told LCIF. “I know the Lions are coming. We are getting contacts via various means from Lions and clubs all over the U.S. wanting to help. The local Lions are helping individually through the Red Cross and personal volunteering at the hospitals and distribution points.”

The Mississippi Lions state office asked clubs to purchase chain saws. “We figure one person can clear his home and then pass the chain saw on to the next person,” David Barham, council secretary, wrote in an e-mail to LCIF.

Lions in Alabama are focusing their efforts on the coastline area where 3,000 homes were destroyed. “Everyone keeps hearing about New Orleans and Mississippi and it’s like nothing happened in Alabama. But it did,” said Council Chairperson Rick Berry of Enterprise, Ala.

The Alabama Lions dispatched one of their eye vans to the coast to do screenings and eyeglass recycling for hurricane victims. A second eye van will serve the needs of displaced people who are in shelters in the middle of the state.

The Dothan, Ala., area has 4,000 refugees, most of them from Mississippi, said Berry. At one shelter, Lions are helping to feed 80 to 100 people each night. Lions in 34-I sent a truckload of water and supplies to Mississippi. Anticipating the donation of goods, Lions in Alabama have secured in advance a large storage space at a Wal-Mart building in Mobile. “Lions here are at work. We’re doing everything we can,” said Berry.

Lions Clubs throughout Florida, which sustained minor damage from the hurricane, are raising funds and collecting and sending goods to areas serving evacuees. Lions in Florida also are helping meet the needs of evacuees who came to their state.

LCIF has made a US$200,000 Major Catastrophe Grant to help hurricane victims. LCIF is focusing its short-term relief in three areas: 1.) providing shelters with unmet substantial needs such as food, clothing, personal hygiene items and bedding, 2.) offering health services such as eyeglass distribution, and 3.) meeting needs of Lions camps and facilities housing victims of the disaster.

Lions in the affected states also are using the LCIF Emergency Grants to issue vouchers to victims to purchase food, water and medicine. Government and civil resources are stretched to the limit in rural areas especially, and Lions are filling in gaps.

I cannot express my appreciation enough to the Lions who are supporting us in recovering from this disaster,” District Governor Robert Andrepont of 8-O wrote in an e-mail to LCIF. “LCIF was very helpful and timely with processing my grant application. I have received e-mails with promises of support and prayer from around the world. I cannot tell you how much we treasure our fellow Lions' thoughts and prayers.”

LCIF Chairperson Clement Kusiak has appointed a steering committee of four leading Lions from the four states most affected by the tragedy to serve as liaisons between LCIF, Lions in the disaster areas and Lions who want to help. These four Lions are:

• International Director Robert Eichhorn, 4301 St. Francis Street, Metairie, Louisiana, 70001, 337-237-7169 (temporary phone number), 504-525-7235 (business), 504-455-6951 (home), 504-525-7238, (fax), execdirector@llef.gs.net
• International Director Howard Jenkins, 850 Mt. Vernon Road, Columbus, Mississippi, 39702, 662-328-2756 (home number and fax), hjenkins@cableone.net.
• Past International Director Lowell Bonds, 1808 Hummingbird Lane, Hoover, Alabama, 35226, 205-322-6575 (business), 205-823-4941 (home), 205-328-3612 (fax), ljbonds@aol.com
• Past International Director E. Robert Lastinger, 29743 Morwen Place, Wesley Chapel, Florida, 33543, 813-994-9604 (residence), 813-994-0844 (fax), edbobl@earthlink.net.

LCIF also has set up a Web-based Help Link to connect Lions who want to volunteer time or donate goods with Lions in the affected areas who are staffing shelters and are in need of assistance.