United Way of Northern Arizona — Our Neighbors Need Your Help

Monsoon season returned with a vengeance this year, pounding the Museum Fire burn scar and resulted in extensive damage to our community. Just look at the headlines from the past few weeks:

In addition to the estimated $1 million in public infrastructure damage (not to mention the Killip Elementary School building being shuttered), much of the burden of this season has been shouldered by residential areas. Many homes were hard hit by flood waters – not once but multiple times – and now have extensive interior damage.

Please consider helping these neighbors by donating to the Crisis Response Fund.

The United Way of Northern Arizona is joining forces with Coconino County, the City of Flagstaff, Arizona Community Foundation Flagstaff and Housing Solutions of Northern Arizona to create an income-eligible assistance program for those with interior damage to their property.

Once sufficient funding is pooled together, an announcement will be made on the program details and how to apply.

If you can, please help. Your gift to the Crisis Response Fund will help get this project in motion as we recover from an unprecedented monsoon season and prepare for future emergencies.

One of the few bright sunny spots in this terrible rainy season has been the volunteers who have come out in force to help us prepare for – and recover from – monsoon season.

According to our Volunteer Hub records, more than 700 of you gave an astounding 3,853 hours of work filling sandbags and removing debris from mid-June to the beginning of this month. That is amazing and we are so grateful for it.

Our next volunteer event will be this Saturday, September 11. It will be all-hands-on-deck and we invite you to join us.

We’ll be meeting up at 7:30 a.m. Volunteers will receive details on where to go when they register. You can sign up by going to our Volunteer Hub site HERE or, if you have difficulty registering online, please call UWNA at (928) 773-9813.

Please wear closed-toe shoes and sunscreen and make sure to bring your gloves and a hat. If you have a shovel or garden rake, bring that along too, but please mark it so we can make sure it goes home with you!

Lastly, we’d like to take a moment to thank the woman who has made these volunteer events possible.

Sybil Smith is the Coconino County Chair of VOAD, which stands for Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster. True to the name, she is a volunteer herself, and in that role has been the chief coordinator of all our community volunteer efforts.

We simply could not have mobilized the small army of “neighbors helping neighbors” without her. If you see her this Saturday, take a moment to let her know how much she is appreciated. Thanks, Sybil!