After seeing such devastation of people’s domestic infrastructure, Card began to feel that plopping potatoes on plates was short-sighted. “Feeding people was lovely,” she says, “but it wasn’t a long-term answer.” What they really needed, Card concluded, was the means to become self-sufficient — to not only move back into their homes, but into homes in which they were equipped to feed themselves. The problem was that many Katrina survivors didn’t have the money to buy the big-ticket items and appliances to replace the refrigerators, ovens, washer-driers, water heaters, and beds destroyed by the storm.
So after ten days back home in New Hampshire, she, along with Tammy Agard, 38, a Red Cross volunteer from Montana, went back to Mississippi with a mission. Using $20,000 raised by the Monadnock Express Fund, a group of nine Peterborough-area towns that raised money for Katrina victims, they launched Mississippi Home Again, a nonprofit organization that buys beds and appliances for people on the Mississippi coast who lost those essential items to Katrina and can’t afford to replace them, “a critical step,” according to the organization’s mission statement, “on the long road back to normal life, independence and dignity.”
MHA is also committed to delivering its material assistance with “empathy, compassion, and humor,” which is especially needed right now. “The suicide rate is up something like 900 percent,” says Card. And if anything has gotten worse over the past year, “it’s people’s emotional and mental state,” says Paige Roberts, executive director of the Southeast Mississippi chapter of the Red Cross. “As we’re coming toward one year, people are nowhere near where they thought they’d be. Nobody is the same. Nobody is going to be the same. We’re all readjusting to who we are now, as individuals, as families, and as a community.”
Simple solutions
MHA CO-FOUNDER ANNIE CARD: with Pass Christian resident Wilbur Bolton, 82, who lost everything to Katrina and was forced to live in his pickup truck for three and a half months. |
Annie Card speaks not only with empathy, compassion, and humor, but with a sharp edge of no-nonsense practicality. “It’s common sense that’s driven this whole thing,” she says of MHA. “We didn’t bite off some big thing. What’s easier than buying appliances for people? The biggest challenge is getting money, but once you have money, it’s so easy to help.”What makes MHA so effective? “We’re so nimble,” says Card. Unlike behemoths like the Red Cross and the Salvation Army with their attendant case workers, volunteers, forms, and waiting periods, MHA operates quickly and efficiently. “It’s a lighter operation,” Card says. She and Agard also go out and talk to people — another thing they’ve done right. The majority of their days are spent speaking with and assessing peoples’ needs. With one-on-one contact like that, they’re able to help the truly needy, as well as weed out the occasional con artist. “We control the purse strings,” says Card.
They’ve also tapped volunteers and case workers from other organizations. MHA gets referrals from the Salvation Army, the Red Cross, and Catholic Charities, among about a dozen other organizations, who point them to survivors in need of MHA’s assistance. “There’s no other nonprofit doing that right now,” Card says. “We ask for help and we give help, and when you live like that, anything’s possible. It really is that simple.”
