BAYOU WOMAN NEEDS YOUR HELP!

Many of us have seen the great work done for families by Extreme Home Makeovers.  Several of you have encouraged me to video our home and apply.  Problem is, I feel very blessed and fortunate and don’t consider us as candidates because we don’t do great and wonderful martyr-like sacrificial things like most of those people do with their personal homes.  And the last reason is that I could never expect them to come way down here and build a house in a place where it might easily be destroyed by a hurricane.  (and the secret reason is that I could never own a HUGE house without feeling guilty!)

But a commercial on last night’s episode got me really excited about the possibility of  making reality out of an idea I came up with after Ike flooded our community.

PROBLEM–HELP IS NOT IN SIGHT:

There are many wetland restoration projects that can be implemented if only the state could get Army Corp approval, which takes years.  So, the Corp is the holdup while coastal communities continue to flood.

SOLUTION:

The one thing we CAN DO without waiting for government approval is to elevate our homes above the flood plain.  But it is very expensive for those homes that cannot afford flood insurance. We all know how long it might take the state to design and implement such a program, so what about a non-profit to do the same using local labor and volunteers? We would call it People On Pilings!

EXTREME HOME MAKEOVER SWEEPSTAKES AND YOU:

Extreme Home Makeover and Ford combined together to donate a truck and $250,000 to a deserving community project.  With this money, we could elevate 6 wood-frame houses for the needy, put in their sewage treatment plants, and build them two sets of steps up to the house–or a ramp for the infirm.

NOMINATE THIS PROJECT:

If you think this is a worthy project, would you take about five minutes and nominate this project on their site? While you’re there, go ahead and enter to win an F150 of your own!!!

Once again, we could keep up with the progress of this project with photos via this blog, and it would be a marvelous way to keep us all in this together.

Not only that, if any of you have wanted to come down and do something to help the coastal peoples, this would be your chance.  You could come and re-do plumbing once the houses are raised.  You could come and build steps.  You could come and cook for the workers.  The possibilities are endless.

This really gets me excited, y’all.

BW