Help support the needs of the Rubonia community!

Hello. My name is Becky, and I am working together with my friend, Kelly. Our sons play baseball for HitLab Palmetto. They had been doing fielding practice at the Rubonia Community Center, until the hurricanes hit Florida. This is how we were introduced to the Rubonia community, and its wonderful, grateful, hardworking, but needy, residents. Driving around the community, we noticed the evident poverty of most of its residents. We felt the desire to reach out to these people in an attempt to help them meet basic needs.

After Hurricane Helene hit Florida, we heard that the entire community is in a flood zone, and most of the homes had been hit very hard with flooding and other damage. These people had so little to begin with and lost everything they had. We decided to collect money through our sons’ baseball program in an effort to purchase and bring much needed supplies to the members of the community that supports our baseball team by generously lending its baseball field to us for our practices. So, we collected the money, purchased the supplies, and drove out to Rubonia to deliver them. Immediately, the residents of Rubonia captured our hearts! No one took more supplies than they needed, and all of the residents were so grateful for our donations. We also met some wonderful native Rubonians who were very helpful and are still very helpful to our efforts.

Instead of dropping the supplies off at a central location, we decided we would go door-to-door in an effort to find out what exactly people needed and deliver the supplies directly to those who needed them. The residents touched our hearts so much that we decided we would find a way to obtain more supplies and continue our deliveries a couple of times per week for as long as we could, each time visiting old faces and meeting new ones, finding out the immediate needs. We found a source of supplies and continued our efforts, taking only a short break to evacuate from our own homes for Hurricane Milton. After taking only a few days to clean up our own homes and yards after Milton, we headed back out to Rubonia with more supplies. We also raised some additional monetary funds from a single generous donor to supplement our collected supplies and obtain items that were needed but that we could not get from our supply source. We continued this effort until our supply source shut down.

At that point, however, we realized the needs of the residents were changing. Now, a wonderful nonprofit organization was out there removing drywall for residents, but their list was long and they would not be able to work on all of the homes affected. Moreover, we have never seen and still do not see almost any contractor trucks in the area. This is a stark contrast to many other areas affected by the hurricanes, where contractors are on every block. Delivering supplies, we realized that as long as people’s roofs were ok, if their drywall was removed, their homes could be treated for mold, and the residents could move back in, as long as they were able to get some beds and some basic appliances, even if they had no drywall. We obtained some in-kind donations and supplemented that with some purchases from the monetary donor, and moved two families back in their homes with mold treatments, beds, and appliances. A huge accomplishment! We have also provided some basic needs for multiple families who have poor roofs or who are back in their homes but are in need of basic items used in everyday life.

We would like to continue our efforts, but we definitely need more support! There are so many families still lacking basic and immediate needs. There are many families we could move back in their homes if we had the proper support. No one should have to live in their car or overstay their welcome at the home of family or friends where they feel unwelcome. We have had only one main monetary donor so far, but we need more to continue our efforts. Eventually, we would like to grow this effort to where we are just going out there to visit Rubonia once or twice per month and meet basic needs. We would like to continue our support of this amazing Rubonia community for the long term, helping people get or get back on their feet. However, the immediate need is so great that we are a long way from that type of effort.

We are just two moms, helping people in need in what little spare time we have. We could use manpower, but we need donations to hire manpower. Contractors of all sorts are needed, especially drywall hangers and electricians. We would love to hire contractors, but we need donations to do so. Volunteers and donations are now immediate needs. These people deserve to get back in their homes!

Please support us so we can support this wonderful, relatively forgotten, community. It is small, but the sense of community is strong. Because it is small, we feel it is definitely being overlooked by volunteers and other members of the community. We need your support to keep #ruboniastrong