hmmm

well today i was on my food for friends route for a few hours. it should go much smoother thursday because i'll know where the hell im going! i have 6 houses on my route all in New Orleans East. It's pretty close to my neighborhood but i dont deliver to anyone here. i dropped off to people in two different FEMA trailer parks. those places are pretty much a disaster. it's just trailer after trailer lined up on black rock gravel. two security guards sit out front all day long in the crazy heat checking id's as people come in. can you imagine living there for 2 years?

this isn't a picture of one of mine but you get the idea:

one of my stops was to a woman and her 12 year old daughter- they are both living with AIDS. on my way out of their park traffic was backed up because of a big arrest going on. i saw a woman get handcuffed and thrown to the ground a guy get punched in the chest by the cop right before they searched him. it was awful. ms. williams told me her grandmothers name was sarah and then asked me to stay for a while- she was my first stop so i could't today but maybe i will sometime. i'm living in pretty extreme poverty at the moment but i got to see it in other parts of NOLA just as bad...

after my route i tried to figure my way home and luckily got lost by a great coffeeshop. i took some me time and had some good coffee, read, wrote a few letters- just hung out. it took me about an hour to find my way back and once i did it was back to work. we are feeding 30 visa'd workers who are here in a shelter tonight and it's family night so we've got some extra kids around:)

in other news: i've talked to unjin krantz about helping with some fundraising for EC. she's been contacted by mike agresta our director of development and he sent the following email. i thought i'd share it with you all because he's a bit more eloquent than me:)

Hi,Kate Fogle at our Lower Ninth Ward site gave me your contact information. She said you were interested in helping to raise funds forour work on the Gulf Coast. As you might be aware, Katrina-related funding is increasingly hard to come by these days. Most foundations (and the American public) are inclined to view the Lower Ninth Ward as a"permanent disaster zone," a sort of worst-case scenario of everyday urban poverty, rather than an emergency situation. As such, we've concluded that we'll have the best luck with private donors.

If you're interested in helping us raise funds for our current project, I strongly suggest you first talk to your friends, family and personal contacts. We have to turn the tide of apathy one person at a time. On the other hand, if you think you can help us find further foundation support, I'm happy to share with you our grant research and some of our past grants.

I'm attaching our annual support from last year and a page of testimonials from our friends on the Gulf Coast to give you an introduction to who we are and what we do. If there's anything you know you need to get started, don't hesitate to ask me. Thanks so much foryour interest in helping out.

Best, Mike Agresta Director of Development Emergency