Evacuee Donation Collection

“We are still here at the Northeast Conference center collecting donations and distributing donations to our evacuees here from Florida and Georgia with Irma,” said DeDe Mogollon of Lauderdale County Tourism.

She says, “As we’ve taken collections, evacuees have come in and we’ve given them back out. And we are expecting a push later tonight, because we know there are a lot of evacuees in town that are going to leave tomorrow and will want to load up their cars before we go," and the conference center has agreed to store, all the leftover donations.

“If we exhaust all of our requests and still have items left we will hold these donations until there is a mission going down to Florida to distribute things, and will send it with them.”

DeDe says that she is very pleased, with how generous the people of Meridian have been.

“Every evacuee who has come in has told us about someone buying their lunch. Or a church cooking for them, or people giving them gas cards. We love the fact that people keep telling us this isn’t what we heard about Mississippi. We’re so glad we experienced it for ourselves.”