– This post is by Maya Chawla, Headquarters employee visiting Ike response effort in Texas

>> AUDIO: Maya Chawla at Houston’s mega shelter

This morning, as I approached the Mega Shelter in Houston, I honestly didn’t know what to expect. Never have I seen an abandoned superstore turned mega shelter housing anywhere from 800 to 1,000 people weeks after a disaster struck.

Hurricane Ike, as of late, hasn’t gotten much media coverage with the whole financial debacle happening on Wall Street.

Don’t be fooled.

There are still so many people that need help. If I could give the general public one piece of advice, I would say don’t invest in the stock market, invest in the Red Cross. Invest in the fact that the money you give will be doing something good for someone else. It will be helping the Red Cross provide a meal, a blanket, a shoulder to lean on (among other things) to someone who has been affected by the storms.

Filed under: Development, Disaster Response, Utterz