Since September, most Ohio State students have been busy studying, going to football games, and socializing. Others, though, were busy helping strangers start a new life.
Throughout fall quarter, the College of Social Work played a vital role in helping Hurricane Katrina victims relocated to the Columbus area.
On Sunday of Labor Day weekend, several area service providers were contacted by the Franklin County Commissioners to plan a response to an anticipated planeload of evacuees. It was decided that the college's role would be to help with housing and housing support.
"The plane never came, but a lot of people came," said Tom Gregoire, Associate Dean of the College of Social Work. "Folks just found their way up here."
Immediately after hearing the cry for help, Gregoire started working on ways for OSU students, faculty and alumni to get involved.
"We created an online database," Gregoire said. "People could log on to this database and put their information about their willingness to volunteer."
The database was up and running the next day. The Web site was quickly flooded with Buckeyes that wanted to get involved.
"All hell broke loose," Gregoire said. "It was clear that people had a real need to help and make a difference. Within two days we had 500 people who volunteered. By five days we had 1000."
Carol McLeister, a social worker and second-year graduate student at OSU, was one of those volunteers. She went on to volunteer about 90 hours of her time to the project.
"It was awesome," said McLeister about the experience as a whole. "It was very moving to be a part of."
On Thursday and Friday that week, 350 people were trained to be community resettlement advocates. After the training, McLeister and several others stepped up to be team leaders.
The team leaders were trained further over the weekend. On Monday, one week after hearing about the need, they started helping families find homes. Gregoire stressed that the housing was going to be a long-term arrangement.
"For most of these folks there is no place to go, so we had to look at permanent resettlement," Gregoire said. "The temporary resettlements were going to wind people up in homeless shelters in a few months."
The College of Social work teamed with many other central Ohio organizations, including the Community Shelter Board, the First Link organization, the Columbus Federation Settlement through the Ohio Housing Finance Agency, the Red Cross, and the Columbus Job and Family Services.
Barbara Poppe, director of the Community Shelter Board, explained the significance of the collaboration.
"It was the first time all of us had worked together at this level in this capacity," Poppe said. "We became a task force. It was interesting because we didn't really have an agency but we were acting as if we were an agency."
Families who found their way to the Piedmont Center had a plethora of organizations waiting for their arrival.
"Families registered with the Red Cross, FEMA, Job & Family Support and a representative from Columbus Public Schools," McLeister said. "Everybody was out there."
McLeister said she was surprised at how connected several evacuees were. Many of them had family in Columbus or had grown up in the area. A large number of them had cars as well.
While families met volunteers, housing options were discussed.
"A lot of these people were put up in hotels," Gregoire said. "Some of them were doubled up with families or church members. Our role was to find them housing and then work with a program which was also created that week by First Link called Adopt-A-Home."
The Adopt-A-Home program gave local businesses and religious organizations the opportunity to help prepare homes for new inhabitants. The adopters would buy groceries and items needed to furnish the home.
Gregoire said at least 70 homes were set up that way, and 144 families were placed.
Currently the Federation of Settlement Agencies is doing the home-based follow up to make sure families' needs are still being met. At the time of initial move in, state funding was available to pay for the first month's rent. After families learned about the communities within Columbus, volunteers tried to help match people to the houses and communities of their choice.
"Our goal was to give people three choices," Gregoire said.
McLeister said that a woman from one family she helped place was very excited and grateful when she first saw her new home.
"I feel like I'm on that 'Extreme Home Makeover' show," the woman said.
Another woman McLeister met described how quickly the storm caused its devastation.
"She was sitting on her couch watching a movie when the storm came. It shattered her glass windows and, before she knew it, was underwater."
The woman's young son was swept under the rapidly rising water and she had to dive three or four times to find him.
That woman did not use the services because she said she planned on going back to the Gulf Coast. Still, she wanted to show her gratitude towards those that were offering their help by walking around and thanking them.
Although the initial surge of evacuees coming to Columbus has died down and many students, faculty and alumni are back to their regular daily routines, the experience will stick with them.
"It was really amazing to me to see how many people volunteered and how quickly this whole thing came together," McLeister said.
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