Michigan based disaster relief group revisits Knott County to deliver school furniture

KNOTT COUNTY, Ky. (WYMT) - The organization is known as DRAW or Disaster Relief At Work. Executive Director Greg Martin said their goal is to help in any place they see a need.

“To help communities take one step back towards normalcy after they’ve hit rock bottom,” said Martin.

After spending time in the area last August and meeting Knott County Central High School principal, Bobby Pollard, Martin said they have continued to think of ways to help the school system.

“We had a donation of school furniture to our organization a couple months ago, and we try to keep in contact with all the places that we respond,” Martin said.

He said he reached out to Pollard earlier this year to ask if they could help in any way.

“I said I’ve got some furniture. He said actually the kind of stuff we need is this specific kind of table. Well, we didn’t have those donated, but them our team was like well we could build those,” he said. “We spent a day and we built exactly to spec what they needed.”

Pollard said between the three Knott County Schools heavily effected a lot of school furniture was damaged.

“We’re in the process of replacing everything that we lost but that’s a slow process with FEMA, so we’re getting there but slowly,” Pollard said. “All these donations help us get back to some normalcy and give kids some workspaces, and nice workspaces that don’t still have a little mud on them and those kinds of things.”

He added that the help they have received over the past seven months has been amazing.

“It’s just inspiring. I mean we really appreciate everything. The outpouring of love and support for us has just been overwhelming,” said Pollard.

A total of 20 new desks were delivered on Thursday morning.

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