City desperately in need of volunteers to help tornado survivors get resources

BOWLING GREEN, Ky. – The City of Bowling Green is requesting assistance from volunteers at the old Sears building in the Greenwood Mall to help survivors of the December 11 tornado.

With the initial urgency of needs following the tornado dying down, volunteers are fewer.

To help manage volunteer efforts, The City of Bowling Green hired a volunteer coordinator, Marieca Brown.

Brown says that for the next handful of months, the BG Strong Center will continue to need manpower to assist with their free store and cleanup in the community.

“If you are living in a hotel right now, you might come in and get a change of clothes or two. But you don’t have room for a lot of stuff. So what we are going to see is really going to be seeing people who need assistance coming back repeatedly because as time goes there needs will change,” said Brown.

While anyone is welcome to volunteers, and encouraged to do so, they are specifically looking for certain groups of people to help.

“The ideal folks are folks that can kind of give a few hours each day for a while. We do appreciate any amount of time we can get but there’s some training involved so if we could have, ideally, retired social workers, public safety officers and folks that are used to working with people that have been dealt some trauma that have urgent needs, and needs that can be met,” said Sue Parrigin, Bowling Green City Commissioner.

“We had a lot of people that were on, like, a Christmas break and so they had the time to volunteer. But when January rolled around and they had to go back to work and kids have to go back to school, then you see those donations slow down simply because you have to get back to life. But we will take any donation of time and service that you can provide,” said Brown.

For now, the volunteer hours are from 8:00 A.M. – 4:00 P.M. and you can sign up at the old Sears building in the Greenwood Mall.

To sign up, go to wearebgstrong.com.

That location is also available to provide assistance to survivors of the tornadoes.