A Message on behalf of Jamie Jensen and the Department of Social Work at HSU

September 15, 2015

As many of you know the Valley Fire has currently consumed 11,000 acres of land in Lake/Napa county and is only 5% contained as of today.  The fire continues to spread,  historic buildings and towns are just gone.  Families, friends and animals have been displaced and loved ones have been lost.  Fires are not a new thing to our beautiful rural northern state, but it is rare that so many homes and business are lost.  As a department, we wanted to take a moment to send our love and support to those members of our social work community who are living in Lake and Eastern Mendocino Counties and are living this tragedy firsthand.  Many of us have friends and family who have lost homes.  Currently we have 13 students who are enrolled in our Distributed Learning Social Work Program that are living in the effected areas.  We want to share how proud we are of they way they are each stepping up to support their clients, families and communities.  They are all hardworking and committed advocates who, on top of dealing with their own loss, are making great sacrifices to fight the fires, serve at evacuation and donation sites and support their clients.  

 
We would also like to show our support by providing them with much needed supplies and donations.  We are currently gathering items and they will be delivered to donation centers in Willits and Ukiah on Thursday.  Please take a look at this link http://www.lovelakecounty.org/ to see if you have anything you can spare!  Donations can be dropped off at the Social Work office anytime through Wednesday evening.  If you need for things to be picked up, please email Jlk45@humboldt.edu to arrange for that.  

Some items that are needed include: Children's clothing, toys, pet supplies, food, water, toiletries, towels, blankets, tents, air mattresses. 

Once collected, the items will be sorted and delivered to the site that can most use them.

Thank you to each of you for your help in this.  We are keeping all of those affected in our hearts! 

Be Well. Jamie

 

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