An eight-day herculean effort by area volunteers from service organizations like the American Red Cross to the Chamber of Commerce came to an exhausting end late last week.
Members of the Leadership Augusta Class of 2025 showed up on Thursday, October 10th, in lieu of a regularly scheduled activity.
Sponsored by the Augusta Metro Chamber of Commerce, each month members set aside one day to immerse themselves in myriad opportunities to learn how the community works.
The 2025 class is chaired by Al Dallas (far right) of the Georgia Cancer Center. He said the class was set up to experience arts and cultural opportunities. Because of Helene, it was postponed.
“But I sent out a call to the class, knowing that most of them had it set aside, and said, ‘There’s this great initiative at The Hub taking place. They need all-hands-on-deck’,” he explained. “And we’ve got about 80% of the class here today, and so I think it’s a wonderful opportunity to kind of see Leadership in action, because it is servant leadership and really putting yourself out front to essentially get your hands dirty and help our community.”
The nearly 40-member class represents a cross-section of businesses, including Meybohn Commercial Properties, Textron Specialized Vehicles, and SouthState Bank, along with employees from government and non-government organizations.
The Hub was built as a home for smaller non-government organizations (NGOs) to come together as one community. Hurricane Helene turned it into a hub for people to find help.
Bounded by Walton Way and 15th Street, The Hub turned into an oasis, a central location where donations of food, including fresh produce, water, personal products, and diapers were collected. Hundreds of volunteers spent hours preparing bags filled with items to hand out to people who lined up in their cars, snaking around the West Hub building.
“I think for everybody that’s been involved in this from day one, this is the vision that we have for this building, that it could become what was needed at any point in time for the community,” Rebecca Wallace, Vice President of Programs for the Community Foundation for the CSRA (CFCSRA), told ABD.
Brittany Burnett, President and CEO of the United Way of the CSRA, echoed Wallace’s belief the campus served its immediate mission, then pivoted to serve the community.
“When this building was initially built, it was thinking about some small organizations who can collaborate together to really serve our community, and now, who knew that we’d be here even 12 days ago, looking at literally a point to continue to serve directly the community who has high needs,” said Brittany Burnett.
Dallas said financial donations are important, but sometimes the physical component of volunteering brings the importance of community into specific focus.
“Being able to see the community so willingly giving of their time to help others, I think we’ve been reminded of the importance of it as a result of this devastating event,” he said. “So, just to be able to provide our class with this opportunity, I think probably is more meaningful than any official class that we could have had today.”
The Hub began winding down as a point of distribution (POD) on Friday because it was becoming difficult to sustain the magnitude of the operation.
“Every day we have been going through waves of food,” she said. “We start the morning with food, we get down to nothing. Somehow, more comes in. We find more. We’ll get down to nothing. That’ll happen three times in a day, and I don’t know how sustainable it is to continue to do that at this level, when you’re working strictly off of a volunteer-driven program.”
Wallace said the Red Cross will continue distributing aid at The Hub and they are talking with the city on the need to possibly do something more long-term in another location.
