As told by Blase Bova, St. Vincent de Paul’s director of operations and development
A couple years ago, St. Vincent de Paul executive director Steve Zabilski encouraged me to apply for a Piper Fellowship, which I won. I’m honored, of course. The fellowship allowed me to choose any personal or professional development courses that I wanted, so I picked an executive program for non-profit leaders at Indiana University’s fundraising school.
I also selected some off the wall things like a yoga class. Have to keep the body and mind fit, you know.
Finally, I attended a summer writer’s workshop and festival in Iowa City.
This is where it gets interesting.
The Iowa floods of 2008 arrived the same day I did. Water was everywhere when I got into town and I quickly learned that the writer’s classes would be canceled.
I have an attraction to crisis situations it seems.
I called a hotline number to volunteer with the disaster recovery team that was just forming. I instantly became one of their overworked volunteers, helping at first to answer phone calls. In the process I could see first hand the things that weren’t quite working well. I hand wrote a resume and gave it to the onsite director who put me in charge of response center operations.
The volume of volunteer calls coming in was so high that I could literally pick the skill sets I needed to desperately fill support positions, like software professionals for implementing an emergence network and database.
It was a beautiful sight. All these experts were dropping into my lap. I just needed to glue the right people together.
I served 18 hours a day for three days, sleeping on a couch at the lead pastor’s house. It was such an intense experience, and so very rewarding. My St. Vincent de Paul background really paid off, and I’m thankful to Steve Zabilski and my wife Gabriela for being supportive when I wanted to stay in Iowa and help out.
I’m sure we have stories about responding in times of need. I’d love to hear yours. Share your comments here, or drop us a line any time.
