Growing up in a Presbyterian
Church I had heard Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (PDA) mentioned many times but
didn’t know more than that our church gave money to it and PDA helped people
after a disaster. I had also never been to a place where I got to see PDA in
action. So I wasn’t aware of what all they did and had no idea about the number
of people who were involved in PDA.
About a year ago I decided to be a Young Adult Volunteer
and through mutual discernment ended up being placed at Ferncliff Camp working with
Presbyterian Disaster Assistance. Part of my YAV experience has been learning
more about PDA by meeting PDA’s staff and volunteer members of the National
Response Team throughout the year.
PDA hosts a National Response Team meeting every year so
the members can be retrained and can become informed about different things going
on with PDA. Thanks to an invite from Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (PDA) I
was able to attend the 2015 National Response Team meeting in St. Louis,
Missouri. Here I was able to meet almost every member of the National Response
Team and was able to get a more in depth look into PDA. During the first meal I
was introduced to the group. Several of them came up to me afterwards and made
sure I was feeling welcomed or wanted to know more about the Young Adult
Volunteer Program.
The National Response Team is
roughly 100 members from all across the United States. Each person goes through
a discernment event and PDA decides if this person is right for their team.
Each person must be willing to give at least four weeks a year in case they are
needed. The National Response Team is then broken down into several teams with
everyone being on at least one of these teams.
 |
| Sitting around a table discussing topics with members of PDA |
The first full day we had a large group discussion. Most
of the conversations revolved around deployment. I got to learn more about what
it means to be deployed by PDA and the National Response Team was given a
refresher. A deployment is when the office of PDA gets a call that their
services might be needed somewhere. PDA then decides who would be the best
people to send based on the nature of the call and who is currently available.
There is a wide range of situations a National Response Team can be sent to from
providing emotional and spiritual care to leaders of the community affected by
disasters to evaluating and finding churches that could be host sites for
groups to stay in and do recovery work.
We talked about what makes a good deployment which usually
means having a team that gets along, finishing the task that needs to be done
and connecting to the local people. We also talked about what makes a bad
deployment which included a wrong mix of people or not everyone on the same
page, or getting sent in at an inappropriate time. An example brought up was
getting sent in when there is already an urgent need for short term housing. The results would be that the team uses space
that could be used for a survivor of the disaster and the team doesn’t
accomplish the goals of the deployment.
In the afternoon, PDA honored the people who
had helped with Katrina and everyone was allowed to share their stories about
Katrina. It was interesting to see how many people became part of Presbyterian
Disaster Assistance because of the impact PDA had on that area after the storm.
PDA is one of the last groups to leave New Orleans and is still there after 10
years.
The next couple of days were
spent mostly on breakout sessions. These were small sessions where people were asked
to learn about topics they weren’t familiar with. I knew some topics better
than others so I tried to find sessions I knew nothing about.
 |
| We had one afternoon off so a group of us went to the famous Gateway Arch. |
One session I went to was
Story-telling A &B led by David Barnhart. David is employed by PDA to do
Story Ministry. In this we talked about the importance of stories, what they
are all about and why we tell them. Most survivors feel the need to share their
stories to help in their recovery. By recording these stories people can feel
more connected to the survivors when they come to volunteer and it also gets their
story out to people who might like to donate to the recovery effort.
Another session I attended was Human-Caused Disasters A
&B. In this session we talked about what is a human-caused disaster which
could include gun violence, a terrorist attack, an industrial accident, or any
disaster that was directly caused by humans. One thing I learned was that it
doesn’t have to be a big story that gets national attention to get PDA called
in. An example they gave was a time when someone had broken in to a church
during a shootout with police or a congregation where a leader of the church
was killed by gun violence.
There was one small group
session that got turned into a big group discussion because of the interest
level. This was PDA response to Refugee Ministries focusing on the ones in the
United States. The speaker was Susan Krehbiel , who is a part time employee of
PDA and the expert on this topic. She told a story of a young adult who had
married young. Her husband became abusive and was also part of a drug cartel.
She feared for her life so she made an attempt to escape this life and start
over in the United States. Due to the lengthy time it takes to get a visa she
came to this country illegally. She was detained however and if the US deported
her back she would almost certainly be killed. Susan then talked about what
churches near the border have been doing to help with the overflow of
immigrants and what’s being done by PDA. PDA is trying to figure out the best
way to go with this current problem.
Another breakout meeting I went
to was Care for Caregivers. This was a ministry PDA puts on to help those
people who are the leaders after a disaster to de-stress and learn more about
self-care. We only got to go through a small portion of it because it’s an
all-day program but I felt very relaxed afterwards. * After the conference a
group of PDA National Response team members were deployed to the Little Rock
area to do a Care for Caregivers for the leaders of Mayflower long term
recovery group and I was invited to go through the whole program and it was awesome.
If you are ever are in a situation where Care for Caregivers shows up do it is
very relaxing.
Some other meetings I didn’t get
to included Congregational Preparedness. See previous blog if interested in the
subject. Long-term Recovery A&B which is also something I talked about in
previous blog. Hosting which is a big part of PDA. This means that National
Response Team members will go to churches after a disaster and do assessments
to see if they could house volunteers. Two staff members run the call center
and set up groups up to stay at approved host sites.
This is just a summary of the
things PDA does. If you want more information go to the PDA website or see if
you can contact a National Response Team member. I would like to thank PDA for
inviting me. It was a lot of fun; I learned a lot and felt very welcomed. PDA
does a lot of fantastic work and is something members of Presbyterian Church (USA)
should take pride in and feel great about.
