On Sunday, September 11th, I had the honor of volunteering to work an event 
designed to give back to those affected by the flood. The Louisiana Flood Relief was put on by Alex “PoeticSoul” Johnson of Lyrically Inclined at the Lafayette Public Library on the Southside. She received donations and assistance in distribution from an organization called World Peace Connection, Tulane’s Women’s Basketball, St. Josephs Church and a non-profit organization called One Love, just to name a few! The event was an absolute success, so much that PoeticSoul has decided to do another event tentatively in the next two weeks. More details to come as things progress.
What warmed my heart the most was one of the volunteers that worked hard from the beginning to the end, was a homeless gentleman named Earl! T
o see him out there, a man without a home, working hard in the heat to help make sure these people who either had/ have homes got the things they needed and he did it without expecting anything in return…
If that’s not human decency at its finest, I don’t know what is.
PoeticSoul explained to me during our radio interview that what motivated her to do this, is the fact that she’s from the south side. She went home to check on her neighborhood and she saw her childhood under water. That’s never easy to witness. She was invited to New Orleans to do poetry (that is her profession) and she spoke out to people in New Orleans about how people in Lafayette have been affected. I talked to a young lady, from World Peace Connection and she said, the people in New Orleans and Baton Rouge had no idea that it was that bad in Lafayette. They felt compelled to help and offered to help in any way they could, 
so they came with a U-Haul truck full of clothes, shoes, toys, cleaning supplies, cases of bottled water, all the things they could think of that a person or family might need being in the condition they are in.
News on this event spread like a wild fire, The Daily Advertiser, KLFY and Z1059 all covered her event in just a matter of days before the actual event itself!
The purpose of this event was to help but also to restore hope as well as faith into the lives of people who could probably use all the encouragement they could get. But we’re strong, Louisiana is strong, human nature is strong. And we will come up from this, natural disaster.
Like ants in an ant hill. Watch a child be destructive and completely obliterate an ant hill. Kick it over, pour water on it, stomp it out, dig it up. The next day you come back to that same spot and the ant hill is back to normal! Ants experience natural disasters every day, between weather and other animals, people are th
eir biggest factor of natural disaster and yet nothing we do stops them. They just rebuild.
I know we’re supposed to be Louisiana Strong but I want to be ant strong… and that’s saying a lot!
Stay Tuned for details about Part Two of Lyrically Inclined’s Louisiana Flood Relief and Alex “PoeticSoul” Johnson.
OAN: To learn more about Lyrically Inclined, you can follow her on her Facebook fan page and Instagram @lyricallyinclined337
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