2 Aggies Set Up Fund To Hurricane Laura Recovery For Orange Residents

Two Texas A&M University students have formed a relief intended to aid residents of their hometown of Orange, Texas who were affected by Hurricane Laura. Orange is just a few miles from where the storm made landfall Thursday.

Vincent Hale and Dalan Jones, two Mays Business school students, want to help Orange residents whose property was damaged by the storm.

“Having grown up in a town like Orange, we had to watch our community rebuild itself numerous times after hurricanes like Rita, Ike and Harvey,” Hale said.

“Seeing how our communities banded together to help each other instilled in us a passion for wanting to help others rebuild. As our eyes stayed glued to the news on the night Hurricane Laura made landfall, we couldn’t help but think about the sheer devastation that would be happening to all those in its path. Prior to landfall, it was projected that our hometown of Orange was in an area that was expected to receive catastrophic damage.

“After seeing this we immediately jumped into action and began designing a platform that could allow people to both send donations and sign up to receive supplies. We spent the entire night preparing all of our different avenues of help (website, donation links, email accounts, social accounts, etc.) so that we could launch our platform as soon as Laura was finished making its way through our area.”

Hale and Jones have set up a Facebook page and a website*.

Although their own homes were not severely damaged, they are reaching out to assist as many people as possible whose homes and businesses were affected by Laura.

“We haven’t really set a fundraising goal, we just want to help as many people as possible in whatever way that help is needed,” Jones said.

Hale added that the duo has “partnered with United Way to use their already established logistics channels to allocate our monetary resources that we donate. These resources will be sent to both United Way of Orange, and United Way of Southwest Louisiana.”

To get the money to the people who need it, they are planning on using the requests that people submit on their website and recommendations from local officials to allocate the resources effectively.

They are reaching out to local officials from cities in both Southeast Texas and Southwest Louisiana to determine where the greatest need is.

“After we get a good gauge of where and how we can make the biggest impact, we will begin purchasing and delivering supplies to those in need,” Jones said. “We will be taking trips back home over the coming days to assess our personal households and will have a better idea at the time. We plan to keep our social media pages and website up-to-date with all of our progress and be as transparent as possible with how we’re working to give back.”

* This link is no longer active and has been removed.