Sunday, February 10, 2008

CJ's Bus

CJ's Bus is a mobile recreation unit for children affected by disasters. It's named in honor of Kathryn Martin's 2-year old son, C. J., who was killed by a tornado in 2005. They hope to eventually duplicate the bus multiple times across the country.

This is a pretty cool project. When I was doing some cleanup work in central Florida after Hurricane Charley, the church that hosted us had a sort of disaster relief fair. They distributed all sorts of donations, including food service, and even had a business doing free repairs of chainsaws. But what stuck with me is that they had an area set up for children, with lots of games and activities. This was a week after Charley passed through and lots of places, including this church, were without power. Imagine a week stuck at home with the kids and no power. No television. No video games. No air conditioning. You can see pretty quickly how great it would be to get the kids out and keep them entertained for even an hour or two.