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Kuwaiti Delegation Tours Devastated Gulf Coast after Delivering Generous Donation in D.C.
Janet R. Brooks, Special to RedCross.org
Tuesday, February 28, 2006 — NEW ORLEANS – Just 15 minutes in the company of an impassioned American Red Cross volunteer convinced Dr. Hilal Al-Sayer that the Kuwait Red Crescent Society's record-breaking donation for Hurricane Katrina relief had gone to the right organization.
Vice President of the Kuwait Red Crescent Society Dr. Hilal Al-Sayer (left) and Kuwaiti Ambassador Salem Al-Sahab (Center) presented a check for $25 million to the American Red Cross to American Red Cross Chairman Bonnie McElveen-Hunter and Red Cross President and CEO Jack McGuire on Feb. 23, 2006, at the organization’s national headquarters in Washington, D.C.
(Photo Credit: Jennifer Klesinger/American Red Cross)
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A day earlier, in Washington, D.C., Al-Sayer, Vice President of the Kuwait Red Crescent Society, and Kuwaiti Ambassador Salem Al-Sahab delivered a check for $25 million to the American Red Cross. The largest single, outright donation in the organization’s 125-year history, it will be used to support the continuing relief and recovery efforts and to enhance the disaster preparedness of communities in the affected areas.
“The American Red Cross is truly grateful for the outpouring of support from the Kuwait Red Crescent Society and the Kuwaiti people,” said Julie Reynes, Executive Director of International Services for the American Red Cross. “Their generous gift demonstrates how the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement enables people to touch lives in their own neighborhoods and across the globe.”
Following the check presentation in Washington, D.C., Al-Sayer flew to New Orleans for a day-long tour of the Red Cross hurricane recovery operations in Louisiana and Mississippi.
At his first stop Friday morning, Al-Sayer stepped into the back of a Red Cross emergency response vehicle with his video camera and asked volunteer Jonathan Pettus how the crew served food.
Pettus, from Sarasota, Fla., proudly unsnapped the large, plastic food containers to show Al-Sayer the steaming black-eyed peas the crew would be serving that day. Then he described how they assembled the hot meals and dispensed them from a side window to people along his route.
"And you don't just throw the food and water at them," Pettus said. "You talk to them. You get to know them as people."
The daily arrival of the Red Cross food truck, he added, provides returning residents a much-needed break from the arduous work of ripping out moldy walls, installing new Sheetrock and replacing tarpaulin-covered roofs.
"The people say, 'We're all glad to be vertical'," said Pettus. "You get attached to them. You love them."
All the volunteers feel that way, said Al-Sayer.
"You can see it -- the dedication and belief in the cause of the Red Cross," said Al-Sayer. "So when you come and meet them, then you just feel the money you're giving to the Red Cross is worthwhile and it's going to the right place."
Al-Sayer said that his wife will cry when she sees Pettus talking in the video about how touched he was when 9-year-old twin boys on his route drew him a comic book as a present.
Al-Sayer, chairman of the surgery department at the University of Kuwait, also visited a mobile hospital being set up near Tulane University Medical Center to help handle the expected increase in medical cases during Mardi Gras.
On Canal Street, Al-Sayer toured the flood-ravaged headquarters of the Southeast Louisiana Red Cross chapter. All that was left of the boardroom, classrooms and Red Cross store that had been housed on the ground floor were steel girders and a cement-slab floor.
According to the chapter’s Chief Executive Officer Kay Wilkins, the chapter will eventually rebuild, but for now it will stay put at its temporary Metairie offices.
"With the hurricane season approaching, our attention really doesn't need to be on a building," said Wilkins.
Al-Sayer also saw the devastated Lower Ninth Ward, where floodwaters skewed, knocked down and even carried away, homes, churches, schools and businesses, following the collapse of a levee on the Industrial Canal.
The day-long tour also included a drive 70 miles east to Biloxi, Miss., to view the near-total destruction along the Gulf Coast.
At the Mississippi Gulf Coast chapter of the Red Cross, Al-Sayer sampled gumbo and shrimp sandwiches while local Red Cross officials related personal stories of their Katrina experience. In the stress of the past six months, they had rarely talked about them.
As the lunch concluded, Wilkins gave Al-Sayer a thank you message to take home to his country of just two million people.
"Please, when you go back, let everyone in your country know how humbled and honored we are by the help," Wilkins said. "Because it is truly a humbling experience when you realize how close the world is."
Janet Rae Brooks is an American Red Cross writer deployed to Louisiana.
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