Falls Church Area Agency Aids Gulf Coast Immigrants

By Jacqueline L. Salmon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 9, 2006
Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/08/AR2006020800200.html

BURAS, La. -- Fisherman Ky Le climbed out of his truck, hoisting his 3-year-old son, and pointed to a mass of splintered wreckage on a muddy lot.

"That my house," said Le, 42, in his fragmentary English. Then he laughed.

It was easier than crying.

All that remained of the family's mobile home was this slab of linoleum, set on a wheeled hunk of rusting metal and covered with overturned appliances, dishes, clothing and other items. A backpack that belonged to the couple's oldest son lay near his math workbook.

In the moist, salty wind, shards of a nearby metal shed swayed and creaked as Le's wife, Loan, 39, picked through the rubble, looking for documents that would prove the family had flood insurance to cover the ruin caused by Hurricane Katrina.

This was Plaquemines Parish, a ghostly finger of marshy land poking into the Gulf of Mexico and bisected by the Mississippi River, where life and property were swept away when Hurricane Katrina made landfall near Buras on Aug. 29.

The couple and their three children lost their home and car. Miraculously, Ky's shrimp boat sustained only relatively minor damage. After several months of taking shelter with other homeless Vietnamese fishermen and their families at a Buddhist temple 50 miles up the road, the family has settled in a rented mobile home near the temple while they untangle their affairs.

The plight of the Le family, and thousands of other Vietnamese immigrants living along the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast, has become the focus of a Falls Church area nonprofit group, Boat People SOS.

In December, the 25-year-old organization, which works with Vietnamese immigrants through a network of offices nationwide, received a $4.5 million federal grant to seek out and work with the neediest Hurricane Katrina victims, helping them to rebuild their lives financially and emotionally over the next 22 months.

Along with three other nonprofit groups based in the Washington area -- Catholic Charities USA of Alexandria, Volunteers of America of Alexandria and the National Disability Rights Network of Northeast Washington -- Boat People SOS is part of a consortium of 10 organizations nationwide awarded a total of $66 million to assist 300,000 struggling Katrina victims.

Many are poor, elderly or disabled, said Warren Harrity, executive director of Katrina Aid Today, the consortium's parent organization based in Northwest Washington. Some are single parents, while others, like those in the Vietnamese communities that Boat People is working with, speak limited English.

"There are a lot of folks who are just not able to access the world of resources out there," Harrity said.

The contract was awarded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to the United Methodist Committee on Relief, the disaster-relief and development arm of the United Methodist Church, using funds donated by foreign governments. The Methodist relief committee, in turn, contracted with the 10 nonprofits to carry out the work, and it will manage the grant and monitor the groups' progress. The committee program within which these agencies work is Katrina Aid Today.