10/02/2024
UPDATE #2!: y’all are amazing. We are up to $2,034. Only $500 more to cover their rooms for a week. Any extra will go to them for meals. Thank you thank you thank you. I never, in a million years, thought this would happen so quickly. I’ve notified the families and they arriving tomorrow!
UPDATE: wow! I created this post 1 hour ago and left to drive my daughter to a cross country meet. I just checked my messages and we are already up to $600!!! You are all amazing. And I might be tearing up. Thank you! We are 1/4 of the way there!
A call out for help with a family trying to evacuate Asheville. As most of you know, my 2 adult daughters live in Asheville. Thankfully, they were able to evacuate and made it home Sunday night. But they have friends that are still there and have nowhere to go.
There are 2 families that are related. So, aunts, uncles, cousins, mom, son, daughter, etc... 8 people total in 2 houses.
These families were hit by Hurrican Helene, along with everyone else in our beautiful NC mountains. They had no cell service until Sunday, had no electricity until yesterday, and have been out of water since Saturday. Water is not going to be restored for another 2-3 weeks. They've had to throw out everything in their refrigerator. They had minimal damage to their home, except for fallen trees in the yard. Without water for showers, toilets, cooking, washing, etc it's really hard to live there for another 2-3 weeks until it's restored. Many in this family worked locally and are now out of work until the city can rebuild, and their places of business are able to reopen.
Our local Hampton Inn here in town is offering a 15% discount, and they do allow pets, which is great because both families own dogs! I am going to do a fundraiser to help pay for their hotel bill. I'm trying to cover each family for 1 week. If we receive more, I'll reserve more nights. My goal is to raise enough money so that we can reserve 2 rooms for a week. I'm estimating, with the Hampton discount, that will be around $2500.00 for both rooms.
I've never done something like this before. So, I thought of 2 ways to donate to this:
If you know and trust me, you can venmo me directly and note that it's for Asheville family. Even if you don't know me personally, maybe friends on here can attest that I'll keep it honest and only use that money to go towards the hotel. Please PM me for my venmo + last 4 digits of phone number. See comments for correct Venmo.
Or, you can go online and purchase a Hilton gift card and have it sent to my email address. The link for the gift cards is https://buyhiltongiftcards.com/. (my email is [email protected]). If I can actually make it to the full amount I will post that the hotel is covered and anything above that will go to the family directly for food during that week.
I'll do a daily tally, so everyone is kept updated on success!
I'm trying to have them arrive either tomorrow or Thursday. It's a total mess/disaster up there.
Feel free to share my post.
If anyone has any other ideas on ways to receive funds for this please let me know. I don't want to use gofundme as they take a percentage of the payments.
The Hilton Gift Card is accepted at all hotels and resorts within the Hilton Portfolio. With the Hilton Gift Card, you open up a world of experiences worth sharing!
