Featured on WWAY3:
WHITEVILLE, NC (WWAY) — The aftermath of Hurricane Matthew will be felt for years and years to come. Communities have united but there are still victims who are getting lost in the mix as time passes. WWAY’s Daniel Seamans introduces us to the Extraordinary Person of the Week who is trying to create a better way to communicate the problems that linger.
“If I can do anything in my life to even come close to that, it will have been a good life,” Wallyce Todd told Daniel Seamans of her dad’s generosity. Wallyce came back to her roots to take care of her dad in his final years. “To this day,” she said, “I meet people on the street of this town and community who say I still have a bed that your dad gave me.”
- Advertisement -
Her dad passed away and while still in Columbus County, Hurricane Matthew happened.
“You see someone having to deal with all the layers of what a storm does, so at that point their was a seed planted,” Wallyce says of her new calling.
The seed grew into a mission to help bridge those gaps she was finding. “So what I ended up finding over the last month since Hurricane Matthew was that there were a lot of gaps,” she says. As time passed, many of the helpers moved on and there wasn’t a clear cut way to get questions answered.
Related Article: EXTRAORDINARY PEOPLE: Oasis News
“People went back to their lives, if you call and say ‘who can someone call if they have questions about how to get rewiring in their house? What if they don’t have any money because they didn’t have flood insurance and they are working but barely making ends meet and now have to replace everything? How are they going to do that?’ I did not find a number.”
There was no easy answer, but this community minister was hard at work to find help for those in need.
“There was no cohesion, no communication, no information to say ‘hey, this church does a food bank here, non-profit does one here’. So basically all I have done for the last five months is still have in my heart and still have the opportunity to help people with the emotional devastation, God gives me those moments, but truthfully it’s been a matter connecting people and resources because there wasn’t a person doing that,” Wallyce said.
Social media helped connect some of the dots.
“It’s been a lot of ‘these people has a need and I think you can meet it’. ‘Yeah, but I need a truck’. Hey I can use this truck we can do that, I can give furniture but I need it out right now, maybe we can store it,” Wallyce says of connecting the dots with victims and helpers.
Wallyce says the support from churches and charities helps, but much more needs to be done so that no one is left out.
“So it’s just a matter of having someone, and I think what I’ve been able to do has been a gift from God is to resource map and connect they dots. There’s been a great need for bridging the gaps and there has been a lot of gaps,” Wallyce says.
Community CPR, “connecting people and resources”, is the answer. And Wallyce Todd is doing an extraordinary job of connecting.
Wallyce is currently in the process of creating the non-profit, “Community CPR”.
تعليقات