FLOODS ON MARSS

With the flood and so much happening prior to it, I have not had a chance to up date anything on Facebook for ages, however, we thought it time to start telling people  some of the things we are doing towards helping Mitchell recover from the floods.

The key to this recovery isn't really so much what we do, but what you the community want and need to be done and for the whole community to be aware of the communities needs.

We have listened to a number of groups in the community who are doing a marvellous job in the restoration of the moral of our local people and the community at large. Our involvement at this level is to lend our support by supplying our DGR (direct gift recipient) name behind the fundraising, and then stepping back and allow the organisations with the organisational skills and manpower to continue with the immediate recovery.

Fortunately all organisations in Mitchell come to the table with different agendas. MARSS is no different. We are a benevolent organisation with a focus totally on ensuring members of our community who are marginalised or disadvantaged are not forgotten. We are a charity nothing more and nothing less. We don’t care who gets what, as long as it is got! J

MARSS is on the street, as we always are. Though out the flood in Mitchell we got food to people who had chosen to stay in their homes or who were not able to leave their homes. We dropped off food to workers who couldn’t get into town and distributed other items as needed. We know we missed some people, and we apologise for this, but with only three team workers and no car, things were a bit tough!

Since the water went down, we have the majority of the baby to aged 5 clothing passed over from the recovery distribution centre in the Hunter’s Store and are distributing this to the community. The amount of clothing received would fit a small army of little people.

We continue to mow lawns and help with the clearing of gardens that are filled with rubbish. Though our key workers are getting tired as they are doing approximately 2-3 yards per day and we all know how big Mitchell back yards are! Add water, sand and mud and you end up with a miniature moonscape that has little alien plants sticking up all over the place. The guys are finding that mowing is more in the line of whipper snipping than actually having the leisure of a ride on mower just buzzing about. They seem to come back every afternoon whining, I don’t understand why!!!

Our next task is to door knock every house with a wish list from people in the community. One of our biggest gripes about this disaster is not knowing who are ALL the vulnerable people in the community. We are well aware that several services have some of this information, but the key organisations such as the SES were not informed. We are also well aware that the SES, Lifeline and the Red Cross have gone to houses previously when the community was in total disarray and they continue to undertake some of this outreach, but these people are not local and were not here and experiencing the flood as we were. Mitchell is our home, just as it is yours and we want all people in this community to be strengthened by this event, not left to struggle.

We need to stress, that everyone in this community was affected by this flood. It doesn’t matter if you had water in your yard or not, you experienced the emotions that your neighbour did, and in some cases more so as many feel the guilt of being ‘lucky’. It isn’t about who got more, or who got less, it is about making sure that rebuilding Mitchell is a team approach to make it better than it was before.

We can also think in some ways that this disaster is in fact a blessing. Turning a setback into a blessing is to have a paradigm shift when something “bad” happens. Instead of seeing it as devastating, begin to look at where it’s going to lead you. Though this we have all met new people, we are seeing people in a different light. We have experienced many good things from this flood, they way people have rallied round and helped one another, the way people we never even thought twice about from the other side of town have stepped forward and lent a hand. We all might have thought of Mitchell as a great little town, but working together shows us that we can make it an even better place to live.