The Mountain Home Salvation Army is looking for volunteers to help staff its canteen truck when it responds to natural disasters and other emergencies.
The Mountain Home Salvation Army is currently on standby to be deployed to Louisiana to assist with Hurricane Ida relief work. Canteens are deployed for 14 days at a time. That includes one day for transportation to the emergency site, 12 days on-site providing relief efforts, and then a 14th day to return home.
The Salvation Army’s Arkansas-Oklahoma group, which includes Mountain Home, has deployed eight canteen trucks to the Gonzales, Louisiana, area to help furnish meals for hurricane and emergency personnel. Gonzales is a city of 12,200 residents in southeast Louisiana.
Maj. John Robbins of the Mountain Home Salvation Army says that when the organization dispatches a canteen to a major emergency, it likes to have a team of three or four people attached to that truck. Robbins says that if the Mountain Home branch got a call to immediately deploy, its team would currently consist of himself and one other volunteer.
The Mountain Home Salvation Army previously had a standing team of volunteers that could be dispatched on short notice. Those numbers lead to the Mountain Home canteen truck being one of the first Arkansas-Oklahoma trucks to be called into service when disaster struck.
Robbins says he would like to build those volunteers numbers back up to better respond to emergencies. He describes the type of volunteer the Salvation Army is looking for.
Listen:
Having six-to-eight volunteers would allow the group to be split up into more than one response team. Two volunteer teams would allow a canteen’s 14-day assignment to be split into two, seven-day assignments, with one team relieving the other after the first week.
For would-be volunteers concerned about not being available to serve for a two-week stretch, Robbins says the Mountain Home Salvation Army responds to smaller, local disasters that do not require a long commitment. The Mountain Home headquarters also operates a weekly food-delivery program, giving volunteers a chance to serve one day a week and return home each night.
The Salvation Army provides the training required to be a part of a canteen volunteer team. Those interested in becoming a Salvation Army volunteer should visit the organization’s disaster response web page at disaster.salvationarmyusa.org for more information, or contact the Mountain Home headquarters by calling (870) 424-5708.
WebReadyTM Powered by WireReady® NSI