By Yvonne Petrasovits | Executive Director
Doorways Update April 2020
We are not unlike other communities around the globe, where this past quarter brought many changes to our lives, our service delivery, and the global community. Effective March 19, 2020 our area is under two declared states of Emergency – one from Hurricane Michael, which continues from 2018 and a second related to COVID-19. According to our Emergency Operations Chief, this is unprecedented.
Rebuild work: Although we predicted embarking on the busiest time for rebuild work, we had nearly all of our non-profit builders and volunteers return home due to the COVID-19 Pandemic leaving just two local organizations. This has obviously reduced our ability to make much progress on rebuilds/repairs. To date we have 92 completed rebuilds. One of our larger non-profit partners, Catholic Charities is just now starting to work on completing roofing work. We are hopeful that work can resume soon.
Use of funding:With Island Spirit Funding we were able to serve 14 Hurricane Survivors in the following manner: 6 clients were provided temporary shelter who needed stabilization or were awaiting housing; 2 clients were relocated to family outside of our area; 3 homeless clients were housed; 2 clients received rent assistance and 1 client received past due utility assistance.
Disaster Case Management: The Disaster Case Management Program (DCMP) is currently working remotely and unable to visit with survivors due to the COVID-19 Pandemic. There are still over 300 households in FEMA trailers and/or FEMA direct Housing not to mention the households that are literally homeless. Doorways works hand in hand with the DCMP providers in the Northwest Florida region by providing resources, housing solutions and financial assistance to many of their clients.
Community Recovery/Resource Center (CRC): Finally, the chart below illustrates the types of services that Doorways and the other organizations present at the CRC are providing daily. In this report, we are reflecting data through March 12, which was the last day that we were open to the public. We decided to close due to the COVID-19 Pandemic and the protection of our staff and community. We continue to serve clients through electronic means, phone calls and document drop off locations. Effective June 15, 2020 the CRC will re-open by appointment only.
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
