PROMOTING THE COMMUNITY
disaster relief
Northwest Seasonal Workers Association Disaster Relief and Recovery Efforts
N orthwest Seasonal Workers Association (NSWA) is in urgent need of donated space to relocate its Benefit Office and continue daily distributions of emergency food, clothing and footwear, sanitary supplies, household items and other supplies for its Disaster Relief Unit which has run continuously since the Almeda Fire. As a result of the Almeda Fire, hundreds of NSWA members lost everything – their homes, clothing, tools, family photos, legal documents, some even lost their pets. The fire hit those hardest that who had the least to begin with, but didn’t stop there. Many businesses were lost, and our local governments face revenue shortages. According to FEMA 2,492 residential structures were destroyed in the fire. More than 500 of those homes belonged to membership families of our association. We immediately established communication with several hundred membership families and began taking requests for what they needed. Donations poured in from individuals, businesses and religious institutions from 11 states, from Hawaii to Vermont. More than 150 new volunteers came in our doors in the three weeks following the fire, assisting with intakes, phone calls, sorting donations and distributing resources. Rogue Valley Microdevices donated storage and the Medford School District has graciously hosted our Benefit Office since the beginning of our relief efforts until now. Thanks to the generosity of People’s Bank we were able to get over 100 families whose homes were destroyed into hotel rooms. Over the past 5 months we have been able to fill more than 1,000 disaster relief requests with everything from
securing emergency housing, hygiene supplies, clothing, blankets, legal assistance, medical assistance, food, face masks and more. Northwest Seasonal Workers Association (NSWA) is an all-volunteer, self-help membership association of seasonal workers and other low-income workers uniting to end our poverty conditions. We are independent and take no government funding. NSWA members work in some of the most essential industries of the Southern Oregon economy: they work as migrant and seasonal farm workers, restaurant workers and housekeepers in hotels and motels, reforestation and wildland firefighters, construction workers and more. Our members build a self-help benefit program of emergency food, clothing, preventive medical care, legal advice and more, while building organization to change the root causes of our poverty conditions. We have been proud members of The Chamber since 2016. NSWA has been all-volunteer since our founding in 1976 – we have no paid staff. Our most urgent need is volunteers. Most of all we need full-time volunteers and others who can set a schedule of when they can reliably come in. Our doors are open from 9am to 9pm every day of the week. We are seeking another space for a Benefit Office to continue distributions to fire survivors as the availability of the school district space is ending. If you are interested in volunteering in our disaster relief efforts, would like to can host a collection of resources or would like to know other ways you can support our efforts, please call 541-773-6811. n
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February 2021 | The Business Review
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