Support Urgent Hurricane Helene Relief Efforts

Dear Friends of All Hands & Hearts!

In response to Hurricane Helene, All Hands and Hearts (AH&H) is 16 months into our initial 12-month commitment to a long-term U.S. relief program in the heavily damaged Asheville, NC area.  We have provided months of debris cleanup and stabilization services, plugged our volunteers into community distribution sites, and fully transitioned into long term home repairs with great success.  Our current expectation is to provide critical home repairs until June 2026.

Highlights / Key Achievements / Challenges (December 2025)

• The program has been extended for an additional two months, with June 10 as the official date of the end of our ramp down in order to ensure we have time to meet our Red Cross requirements. 
• We planned an additional day for a few Travelers employees to come back out to Barnardsville and distribute frozen turkeys, fresh pies, and local vegetables so that the families that receive a weekly food distribution had an extra special Thanksgiving. Shout out to Beth for sourcing and carrying many hundreds of pounds of turkeys and to Travelers for extending the funding on the food distribution program there. 
• We’ve been awarded a new recovery grant from Center for Disaster Philanthropy (CDP) to supplement our North Carolina Emergency Management contractor repair work.
• We’ve been continuing to meet with LTRGs for intakes and stronger partnerships.
• We’ve finished work at 11 Red Cross  homes and project to have another 7 done by end of January
• We’re preparing for 10 NCCC volunteers to work alongside our crews in January 2026
• To date, the team has completed 92 muck and guts, 79 mold sanitations, 18 debris removals, 35 chainsaw jobs and 11 moisture barrier installations. Additionally, we have completed 19 recovery sites, with 7 more underway, and 5 homes in queue.

Community Partners

• Buncombe County LTRG - case management and referrals
• CORE - Lead partner in a mobile home community restoration project.
• Lake Junaluska Conference & Retreat  Center - Local faith-based hotel and retreat complex where we provided post-disaster repair work and where we have our residential base.
• Land of the Sky United Church - Local church partner active in case management activities.
• Mountain Projects - Local community action agency serving as a local recovery group for the long-term recovery of Western NC communities affected by Hurricane Helene. 
• Savage Ops - Local grassroots distribution center for non-food items that we have been supporting with volunteers.
• Team Rubicon - Long-time national partner that was piloting a service learning program and shared some of their volunteers with us.
• Toolbank - Long-time national partner that provides free tools for our recovery work.

Program Challenges

• Relocation of Residential Base - within the seasonal resort where we have our base of operations and our residential accommodations, we are outfitting a new area in the heated part of the facility to accommodate our staff & volunteers for the remainder of the program.
• Development of a Mold Sanitation SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) with other U.S. programs to provide to individual homeowners and for community training on demand.
• Staffing - with two large recovery grants awarded recently, we are actively looking to hire several program positions.

Our Impact To Date

• 1,163  # of Individuals impacted
• 158    # of Homes with completed response and recovery work
• 737   # of Residential Volunteers
• 413   # of Day Volunteers
• 1,100   # of Volunteers in total
• 58,259 # of Volunteer Hours (the equivalent of $702,170 in donated labor at $35/per hour)

Volunteer Feedback

"One of the best experiences of my life, everything was perfect, the volunteers were great, the work was interesting and instructive and the best part was the staff who were just exceptional, I loved this experience."

"The inspiration I received from working with such a well-organized, inclusive organization that truly cares about every volunteer and staff member, and has a fabulous impact on so many. After having volunteered with many similar disaster relief organizations, I learned so much from this group, both from the training and during my time working and driving with the staff and long-time volunteers. It was truly a life-changing experience, even after only 1 week."

"Here, you have a feeling of being part of something important. You learn things that you probably never thought you would learn, and you can see that your work is i; important for the community."

"The best answer I can provide is how much better I feel about myself as I'm leaving, as I achieved every personal goal I had set for myself. I arrived with a lot of self doubt and discovered this whole other side of myself I didn't really know existed. I learned so many things I never thought I'd ever have exposure to, learned I can still add muscle to this older body (really cool!) & reminded myself of the power of gratitude, as it really is healing! I've always loved people so living/working in an environment with so many different people with different backgrounds, different life experiences, from different locations on the planet was probably one of the greatest things for me!"

Thank You! 

All Hands & Hearts