University creates Katrina relief task force

The University has launched a task force to coordinate WSU’s many efforts to assist the victims of Hurricane Katrina.  Melanie Brown, director of the Community Service Learning Center, and Tom Brigham, professor of psychology and Office of the President, are the co-chairs.

Members of the task force will include representatives of the major student, faculty, and staff groups.  The purpose of the task force is to identify and support the various activities and to develop a small number of ongoing projects for the WSU community.  Two initial projects the task force recommends are
— Backpacks for Hope.
— Operation Good Samaritan at Grambling State University. 

We are supporting the Backpacks for Hope project in cooperation with the One Sweet World Foundation, a program of Steve Gleason, 1999 WSU graduate and a member of the New Orleans Saints football team, and his mother Gail Gleason, a Ph.D. student in the College of Education.  The WSU community will collect backpacks of school supplies for the approximately 250,000 school children displaced by the hurricane.  There will be collection tables on campus and at the Grambling football game in Seattle. 

At the game in Seattle, we will also collect money for the Good Samaritan Fund at Grambling, located in Grambling, Louisiana.  They are using these monies to support the several thousand evacuees who have come to their city and university for refuge.

If you would like to help out with these projects or inform the task force about a project you or your group is sponsoring, please contact Melanie Brown at 5-5401, email melanieb@wsu.edu, or Tom Brigham at 5-6676, email brigham@wsu.edu.

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