While many students and faculty members spent the recent spring break back home with family and friends, members of BonaResponds, an on-campus 501(c)3, traveled to Dickinson, Texas for a week of crisis response. Mainly, the group’s work aided those still impacted by Hurricane Harvey, which hit the region this past August.
In total, 25 students attended the trip, along with 30 alumni and outside volunteers, focusing their efforts in the town – southeast of Houston and around 20 minutes outside of Galveston – from Feb. 23 to March 3. The group was led by Jim Mahar, Ph.D., BonaResponds founder and an associate professor of finance, and they stayed at the local Mount Olive Baptist Church.
Yvonne Gehrmann, president of BonaResponds, said these accommodations – and the addition of non-Bona’s volunteers – was made possible through the generosity of a Texas alumnus.
“One alumnus is from Texas,” she said. “He told his church about what we were doing, so he brought a bunch of his friends with him to help out.”
Gehrmann explained that the main intent of the trip was to help any and all the group could, regardless of the need at hand.
“Our main goal was to help those who had been forgotten, and if we did anything, we wanted to bring them hope,” Gehrmann said. “And that is exactly what we did. Most of the people we helped were ‘illegal immigrants’ from Mexico, elderly people living alone, people with physical disabilities or some combination of the three.”
In helping these individuals, Gehrmann said she and the other attendees found themselves participating in work they couldn’t have planned for, but a kind that had major impacts on locals. Gehrmann added that the group worked from 8:30 a.m. until 5 or 6 p.m. every day.
“The jobs we completed were endless,” she explained. “Personally, I gutted a house (that had cockroaches, termites, hornets and black mold everywhere), built a wheelchair ramp, installed flooring in a trailer home, moved drywall (100 pounds per sheet) and hung drywall. I think we did 100 sheets of drywall in one day.”
Clare Mannion, a junior strategic communications and digital media major, said this was her first service trip with BonaResponds and she didn’t anticipate the volume of assistance needed – especially given the amount of time since the hurricane.
“It was shocking to me how much help the people affected still needed,” she said. “For many of the people that we helped, this was the first time since the storm that anyone had helped them. In my group, most of our days consisted of gutting houses that were covered in mold and extreme water damage left by Hurricane Harvey. A lot of the families we helped have been living in these dangerous conditions for months because they have nowhere else to go.”
Mannion said that this outreach, after months of neglect, gave way to formative moments with locals. Most memorably, Mannion said she spent the last two days of the trip gutting a house for a woman named Andie, whose home had been destroyed by post-hurricane mold and water damage.
“Her house was so destroyed that she was forced to live in one room toward the back of the house,” Mannion said. “She had marked the hardwood floor with duct tape to let her know where the support beams were so that she didn’t fall through the floor and land in the foot of water that was trapped under her house.”
Mannion added that the woman saw the home, which she had moved into a year before the storm, as a chance at new beginnings. Shook by disaster and left hopeless again, Mannion said she believes the group provided Andie a glimmer of hope she hadn’t seen in months.
Mahar also shared that, due to the group’s work, another woman was able to take her first shower in six months.
“Think of it,” he elaborated. “Six months and BonaResponds volunteers were able to help get her bathroom and shower fixed.”
Mahar added that, all in all, the group walked away from the experience providing some peace of mind, as the club has consistently done since its 2005 establishment, following Hurricane Katrina.
“Larry Orsini, who is a retired accounting professor who has been on many trips (including the first ones after Katrina), said in his reflection on his last day: ‘It is over a decade since the first trip, and the group is doing the same things. The things that matter. The things that make a difference,”’ Mahar shared. “Nothing has changed.”
On top of providing aid to others, Mahar said the group walked away with a feeling of incredible growth.
“Seeing poverty not just as stats in a textbook, but as actual people living in conditions that are sometimes unimaginable,” he said. “They also learn that they can make a difference, that people are generally good, and [that] color, religion [and] wealth differences are superficial. People, underneath it all, are the same.”
To get involved with BonaResponds, interested individuals can contact Mahar at jmahar@sbu.edu or Gehrmann at gehrmayn14@bonaventure.edu.
