A Little Help From My Friends

Two skids of 1x4s.

Look like this when piled in the shed.

and like this after helpers make them into table tops.

Here is the portable cutting table.

And here is the delivery- in this case, the shelter in Rikuzen Takada Number One Junior High School.

A fellow OMFer from Tokyo got together with her church and bought colorful cushions for the chairs- a big hit!

At the height of the chair project, we had orders totaling over 200. Fortunately, several short-termers and volunteers pitched in to help. Some of them got very good at turning out a quality product.
By the end of July, shelters were all but closed. Temporary housing had been thrown up at a break-neck pace, and residents were urged to move out of the shelters. Not all of them wanted to! Usually they got sent to different places, as a lottery system was used to allot available units. The close-knit communities that developed in the shelters were broken up; food hand-outs ceased. Not everyone has a car, and some temporary housing projects are far from shopping. Those with jobs are getting on with life, but those still unemployed (and there are many, due to the destruction of many businesses) are in limbo. Finding those with needs, and addressing those needs has become difficult, now that individual conditions are so different, and they are not all in one big room.