People recovery is the most important thing and sometimes to help with people recovery we need to help with property recovery - Joe, Global Care
Global Care opened up shop in Grantham a few days after the devestating inland tsumami destroyed small Lockyer Valley town. They have been operating ever since and will be there for many months to come.
Since January, the team out there has:
- Worked on over 500 jobs with volunteers
- Had 380 clients
- Worked with more than 1500-1800 volunteers
Global Care works mainly on property recovery - cleaning debris, re-fencing and assisting to demolish houses. However, As Joe's earlier quote indicates, property recovery is one way of helping with people recovery. This is the core focus of Global Care's work.
Joe says that for the disaster-affected residents they work with, "the thing that helped the most, more than the money from the Premiers Relief Fund or the insurance companies; the thing that helps the most is the encouragement they’ve received from volunteers. The fact that people they don’t know have taken the time to come help. It’s knowing that people still care for them.
The first thing Global Care did when it arrived in Grantham was set up a BBQ trailer. It went for three months - only ended when the local shop re-opened. In that time they feed volunteers, army, police search and rescue and the locals. Some days they fed more than 250 meals.
These are some of the images from their BBQ at the local school. The stats for this day are incredible:
- 20 volunteers
- 2 BBQs
- 10 kg onion
- 90kg (or 800) sausages
- 54 loaves of bread
ALL SERVED IN 40 MINUTES
