In the year after a deadly tornado tore through my community, I and two other Americorps VISTA have helped to rebuild the disaster services branch of our office in our eight counties, seven of which were affected by the disaster. Also, our own office building was hit hurting our own resources and ability to respond. We've been training volunteers in all areas of disaster response and have given aid to 116 families affected by single family fires since July of 2011. We also sent teams to respond to the January tornado in Birmingham. We've been responsilbe for participating in health and volunteer fairs as well as teaching disaster preparedness and hygiene courses to elementary and middle schoolers. I am currently the coordinator for the Hispanic Service Providers as well, and our Brazos Abiertos health fair for the hispanic community is this Sunday.

Overall, we came into a less than good situation. Our supervisor was gone when we got here and our buidling was majorly damaged as were our volunteers and resources. I was personally affected when my grandmother's home was destroyed in Phil Campbell, AL, which is where I was when I was offered the position on April 30th of last year. We didn't let that get us down. We started almost from scratch and brought this chapter back on its feet, and it will continue to thrive when our service is done.