Monday, September 05, 2005
More Success
Today was one of more successes and a little excitement. The number of persons in the collective survivor/connector databases has grown dramatically as survivors input data at a multitude of sites across Houston, Texas, and the U. S. Yesterday, we cheered 2 or 3 times every hour. Today, a cheer went up every few minutes. People are making connections and discovering hope anew. There was the lady who discovered her husband was taken to a shelter in Austin. I called my friend Gene Crick in Austin, who is working to determine which shelter he was taken to. It is about working together. It is about hope and celebration.
We estimate another 1000+ persons came through the Center today and registered their information in the www.familymessages.org online database. Yahoo is now mirroring the site and it is much more dependable now. It was receiving so many hits yesterday, that it crashed regularly. Thank you Yahoo for making this possible. Plus, Yahoo created a web crawler for folks to use to search multiple sites collecting the names of Katrina survivors. Several hundred thousand survivors are located in over 200 shelters across the US. The main Yahoo Katrina help site is located at http://news.yahoo.com/katrinahelp . To search most of the survivor connector sites at once click on the "Search for Missing Persons" at the top of the page.
Other companies have stepemade donations include HP and IBM. Both companies donated wireless laptops for the project.
As we connect more families, the concerns shift to other things like finding jobs and affordable housing. Many have requested help with things like unemployment and FEMA. The next step will be job and skills training.
The other interesting thing that happened today involved a few visitors to the Center. We had a variety of television and media folks come by and talk with some of the evacuees. Good Morning America, Nightline, Oprah Winfrey and several local news stations came by.
We continue to need volunteers -- 8-1, 12-5, 4-9. Give Pam Gardner a call at 713.454.6400 or send her an email (Pam.Gardner@techforall.org ) . Thanks for your support! Let's work together to create some more hope!
We estimate another 1000+ persons came through the Center today and registered their information in the www.familymessages.org online database. Yahoo is now mirroring the site and it is much more dependable now. It was receiving so many hits yesterday, that it crashed regularly. Thank you Yahoo for making this possible. Plus, Yahoo created a web crawler for folks to use to search multiple sites collecting the names of Katrina survivors. Several hundred thousand survivors are located in over 200 shelters across the US. The main Yahoo Katrina help site is located at http://news.yahoo.com/katrinahelp . To search most of the survivor connector sites at once click on the "Search for Missing Persons" at the top of the page.
Other companies have stepemade donations include HP and IBM. Both companies donated wireless laptops for the project.
As we connect more families, the concerns shift to other things like finding jobs and affordable housing. Many have requested help with things like unemployment and FEMA. The next step will be job and skills training.
The other interesting thing that happened today involved a few visitors to the Center. We had a variety of television and media folks come by and talk with some of the evacuees. Good Morning America, Nightline, Oprah Winfrey and several local news stations came by.
We continue to need volunteers -- 8-1, 12-5, 4-9. Give Pam Gardner a call at 713.454.6400 or send her an email (Pam.Gardner@techforall.org ) . Thanks for your support! Let's work together to create some more hope!
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