Convoy of Hope responding to Texas flooding

“Convoy of Hope was founded in 1994. We are a global humanitarian organization that does not only the disaster response area that we’re talking about this morning, but we do children’s feeding all over the world, women’s empowerment, agriculture. We do community events and community care around the United States. And so we do more than just disaster. But I get the privilege of overseeing our disaster services team here at Convoy of Hope, where we’re based right here in Springfield, Missouri.”One of the things that we want to do, especially when there’s disasters that strike here in the US is to try to be on the ground with much needed resources within 24 hours.  And that’s why on July 4th, as soon as this was unfolding, our teams were jumping into action. We’ve got warehouses, our world distribution center here in Springfield. And of course, we’ve got regional distribution centers around the US and they’re always stocked with supplies. And we have our own trucking fleet. So it does allow us to move very, very quickly on the ground there.

“All of the impacts, of course, the tragic loss of life that continues to unfold as they continue to search, but then bringing hope, bringing the resources, the emergency supplies, which can be food, water, hygiene items, baby care items, even cleanup items and things like that, as people are trying to figure out what the next steps are. And then even this past weekend, we’re starting to mobilize volunteer teams to start doing cleanup for those that are trying to get on the other side of this.

“One of the things that has been somewhat overlooked is the news is very much focused on Kerr county, as it should be because of the loss of Life. But the July 4th weekend impact was actually in multiple areas across the state, some areas over 100 miles away from Kerr County. And so Convoy has been in all of those different areas from San Angelo, San Saba, Marble Falls, different areas like that that also had impact. So we’ve got teams that have been really crisscrossing the state over the last week and a half, distributing resources and working with local churches and local officials to make sure that we’re getting the resources in the areas where it’s needed most.

One of the things that Convoy kind of prides itself on is being very nimble in all of these situations you might have seen over the years in videos and things like that. One of the big things that we do is drive through distributions that you would on a very large scale response, especially hurricane responses and things like that, all the way down to the one on one person that might just walk up to a local church where we’ve got product out there or what we call mobile distribution, where we’re going right into the communities where folks, especially in this particular situation where they may have lost vehicles and things like that because they washed away and so they can’t get to where we may have a distribution set up.

We appreciate all of the support that’s out there, whether it’s prayers or whether it’s financial support. And if folks want to know more about what we’re doing in our organization, you can certainly check us out and follow our response at convoyofhope.org.”