Ken-Tenn Relief Team , originally the Williamsburg Tri-county Relief Team was established to aid the Gulf Coast after hurricane Katrina.

     

 

On September 12th, Jim Paul went to Baton Rouge, LA. as a volunteer with The National Funeral Directors Association. He worked for three weeks helping families at the Find Family National Call Center. It was here that he realized that  people were not receiving the assistance they needed. Jim visited Waveland, MS. on Thursday, September 29th. While in Waveland  he saw the overwhelming need for basic essentials.

Jim returned home to Williamsburg, KY. and on Sunday, October 2nd, he began making contacts with local churches. On Sunday night at 8:30, Frankie Ball, Jennifer, Jeff and Jonathan Wyatt along with Jim planned the details for their first trip to MS. In four days they raised ten thousand in cash donations for the Waveland Police Department and various other volunteer agencies in the area. Twenty thousand in supplies and decided to head for the MS. Gulf Coast. The group was made up of Jim Paul, Frankie Ball, Troy Sharp, Jeff Wyatt, Sharon Henry, and Jim Wallace. Arriving in the Gulf area on Thursday, October 6th, they set up their distribution center at the home of Mrs. Betty Creasy in Waveland, MS. Since then the team has made over 30 trips to the Gulf Coast area and has distributed over four million dollars in supplies. 

 The team had received many donations from private individuals and  businesses. On one trip in early November, Jim was told of a group called Band For Katrina started by Kathy Reeg. Band For Katrina is a non-profit organization started after hurricane Katrina to give support to small organizations such as Ken-Tenn,  which was directly involved with hurricane relief in the Gulf Coast area. Since our volunteer organization had not received our 501 3C status from the IRS, Band for Katrina donated two thousand five hundred dollars to the Buffalo Baptist Church to ensure that the funds were properly allocated  for hurricane relief. Ken-Tenn was honored to be the first group in history to receive funding from them.

On Sunday, December 18th, Jim and Michael Siwinski of The Christian Journal Leader went to the MS. Gulf Coast area to document what the needs of the area were. On this trip is when several individuals and business from TN. got involved with our group and we became the Ken-Tenn Relief Team.