Need Help from the Off Road Community

[smittycrusher]

I wanted to start a thread to gauge interest and attempt to become organized with this mission of mine. I know that most of you are not in the Atlanta area, but many of you are or know people that are. As many of you know, I went out and delivered food earlier in the year for Project Open Hand during Snowmageddon. POH needed help by those with 4 wheel drive to make their daily deliveries to the people who rely on this food to get by. These people include the Elderly, terminally ill and other shut-ins that need assistance getting proper nutrition. POH delivers over 4500 meals a day and over 1 million meals a year.

Since I volunteered on that cold and snowy day I have been delivering Thursday mornings for a few hours. When I told my wife I was going to get out and deliver food in the snow/ice, she was very supportive. She usually looks at me sideways for wanting to get out and drive/play in the snow. Knowing that I had a purpose, she was very supportive and I still got to have my fun and put the Cruiser to good use.

My goal is to set up a database on people in the Atlanta area that would like to be “on call” with their trucks to get out and help POH during their next weather related crisis. If you are interested to be notified, most likely last minute, please email me your contact information so that I can keep it all organized:

scott.b.smith@mssb.com

Also, if anyone ever wants to join me on Thursday mornings, I would love to have a navigator or some help. I usually get there around 9:30am and am usually done by noon. I get me see great people every week who are very appreciative of the efforts.

Here is the website for POH if you want more information about the awesome organization:


http://www.projectopenhand.org/

Feel free to post/link this thread to your affiliated forums. I would love to have this group get into the hundreds of willing volunteers! Anyone who emails me will get on the list!

Scott

 

[Trollhole]

Pretty cool. Have a feeling this winter is going to be bad.

 

[the gimpey one]

hmmm atlanta is pretty far for us. Meals on wheels would probably need help here though.

 

[Southeast Overland]

I helped shuttle medical personnel last winter. I'm going to contact our local hospital and volunteer my time this winter on an official basis.

 

[GXO]

The medical thing is cool, but they have some insurance s*** they worry about here.

 

[BMThiker]

I heard the Ga Bounty Runners provided 4WD shuttling of non-emergency supplies/staff at Grady Hospital last year. Rumor was they Googled "4wd Atlanta" or something like that and the GBR came up near the top of the list, so they called the GBR president. I think tkinze posted about it earlier this year in the GC forum. I remember it making the local news.

 

[GXO]

Yep! If you do it randomly/volunteer type approach no problem. GA Cruisers tried to do a formal arrangement with call trees, etc and the admins there at the time thought it would have potential for liability since they were formally accepting our help/might be responsible if we put a truck with a hospital employee into a tree, etc.

If it is more good Samaritan/spontaneous I think there is less of an issue.