Photo of BonaResponds volunteers
Photo courtesy of Jim Mahar
BY: JAMESON ZUBER, STAFF WRITER
In response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Jim Mahar, a finance professor at St. Bonaventure University, created BonaResponds. The club managed to gather 286 volunteers to travel to Biloxi, Mississippi, and help relieve victims of the storm however possible.
“BonaResponds is a service organization that began after Hurricane Katrina,” said the club website. “Since then, the group has provided disaster response in multiple states as well as many, many projects to help those in need.”
Nineteen years later, Mahar is working to plan multiple hurricane relief trips aligning with academic breaks to North Carolina and Florida in response to Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Ian.
“ [Hurricane Helene] has been the toughest to plan a response to, by far… definitely since Katrina, maybe ever for us,” Mahar said in a BonaResponds Facebook post.
According to Mahar, the logistics of planning a relief trip are made much more difficult for the club with the widespread nature of Hurricane Helene
“The disaster has exceeded the response possible through all the various charities out there,” said Mahar. “We expect bad storms, but this one was really bad.”
BonaResponds dedicates itself to those in need, no matter what. This includes Olean locals in need of wheelchair ramps, cancer patients and even those in need recovering from the effects of a natural disaster, said Mahar.
“We want to make the world better,” said Mahar. “I’ve fought this for years and I don’t want us to be categorized by anything less than that.”
Patrick McGreal, a senior accounting major, has been a club member since his freshman year. He attended the February 2023 relief trip BonaResponds took to Florida, and is ready to help in upcoming projects.
“I know down in Florida we were gutting houses, tearing them apart to get moldy wall insulation out…up on roofs tarping over holes to stop water falling in,” said McGreal. “What we do depends on the job site and what the people need.”
With BonaResponds, it’s not just about the jobs — it’s about talking and working with the homeowners, said Mahar
“If we can be there to help someone through their time, it’s something we want to do,” said Mahar.
zuberjd23@bonaventure.edu
