Source: Twitter @coryalpert
Earlier this month, Columbia, South Carolina saw a historic rainfall that led to a devastating flood. Dams breached, roads crumbled, lives were lost, homes and businesses were destroyed, and the community was left heartbroken.
Although practically unscathed, the University of South Carolina-Columbia was forced to cancel classes for a week due to lack of safe drinking water. Many students left town after receiving word of the impromptu break, but for one student in particular, this break did not turn into a vacation.
Meet Cory Alpert; a junior here at USC who has recently become a celebrity due to his overwhelming kindness and dedication.
Source: WIS News Columbia
Cory was devastated over the flood damage and decided he had to do something to give back to his college town. On Sunday October 4, Cory got together with friends and created a Google doc to post on Facebook to see if any students were interested in volunteering in flood relief efforts.
“We went to bed expecting 15 to 20 people to respond…we woke up to 500,” Cory said, grinning.
And just like that, U of SC Relief was born. Within a week, the organization had over 3,500 registered volunteers and many more within the community following the Twitter account and signing up for volunteer shifts.
In that one week off of school, U of SC Relief saw “nearly a thousand volunteers do many thousands of community service hours,” Alpert reported.
What started off as a group of friends looking to help turned into a citywide flood relief campaign. Cory says he and his friends got involved with the university after going to Russell House Student Union and telling them that they “were going to do something about this.”
“The Leadership and Service Center were very kind and offered us space and assistance…they had staff members who were able to help us, who were able to coordinate things that we weren’t able to. We’ve been getting a mass amount of requests and we wanted to make sure we could handle all of that.” Alpert said.
“I think the university picked up on the fact that there’s a student-led movement here to make sure the city’s okay.”
The USC Flood Relief Twitter account (@UofSCRelief) currently has over 1,000 followers. Alpert says that he and the team use the account to coordinate with affected victims or other volunteer groups who need help.
Source: @UofSCRelief
“We’ll get messages all the time saying, ‘Hey, can you help out with this.’ We’ll send a message back if we notice that someone’s needing help and say, ‘hey, give me a call here, we’d love to send volunteers.’ Then we go back to our “war room,” our headquarters, and we set up those volunteer shifts and make sure volunteers are getting out there, that they’re being fed, transported, things like that.”
Although the rain has gone and the university is back in full swing, U of SC Relief continues to coordinate volunteer opportunities in order to help people who are unable to return to normalcy due to flood devastation.
We at HerCampusSC want to thank Cory for his amazing efforts. Cory, you are an example of being #SCStrong!
If you are still looking for volunteer opportunities, be sure to follow the Twitter account @UofSCRelief.