Volunteering to clean up the BP oil spill mess in the Gulf of Mexico? (school)

[jambo101]

Are there any organizations that i could apply to to go down to the Gulf coast to help clean up that mess?
Are there any plans to recruit any of the millions of kids who are now out of school for the summer who may want to participate in the clean up?

[JSizzle225]

This is a good idea. When you find out let me know.

[PeterRabbit]

The govt. has let BP run the show so far. There's 1000's of trained volunteers that have been waiting 6 weeks and BP won't permit them.

[jambo101]

Evidently they have it all taken care of down there.

[JSizzle225]

Originally Posted by jambo101

Evidently they have it all taken care of down there.

What? Why? It's OUR America. Not BP's...not even the GVT's America, but US the citizens. I say if we want to get off our butts and clean up this atrocity then we do it. I'm going to google "gulf clean up" and see if anything comes up.

[girlbuffalo1]

I too would be interested to know organizations for volunteering later this summer

[jambo101]

oil cleanup volunteers - Google Search

Maybe i didnt word that quite right but basically a lot of the sites seem to have enough volunteers for the moment so most major clean up organizations are asking people who want to volunteer to go on waiting lists to be called upon to help. I was hoping to not have to go through a bunch of bureaucracy and merely showing up would be enough to help in the process.

[Bo]

Originally Posted by jambo101

I was hoping to not have to go through a bunch of bureaucracy and merely showing up would be enough to help in the process.

There's liability involved. If you touch that oil without proper protection, you come into contact with known carcinogens and toxins. Under those conditions, there's no way you can volunteer without some bureaucracy, training and supervision. If volunteers get sick or fatally ill from volunteer work, they could sue an organization out of existence.

Let's say you go down there properly gloved up and suited up to dig up oily sand from a beach and put it into garbage bags. Someone needs to safely dispose of whatever you dig up. I doubt the law would support tossing those bags into the nearest landfill.

Or if you go down there to clean the oil off of sea birds, someone needs to safely dispose of the rags you used to clean each bird and someone else needs to train you and other volunteers to handle the birds in such a way that they don't injure you and you don't injure them.

There's a lot of secondary effort and logistics involved to support the volunteers who "just show up."

[BECLAZONE]

Originally Posted by Bowie

There's liability involved. If you touch that oil without proper protection, you come into contact with known carcinogens and toxins. Under those conditions, there's no way you can volunteer without some bureaucracy, training and supervision. If volunteers get sick or fatally ill from volunteer work, they could sue an organization out of existence.

Let's say you go down there properly gloved up and suited up to dig up oily sand from a beach and put it into garbage bags. Someone needs to safely dispose of whatever you dig up. I doubt the law would support tossing those bags into the nearest landfill.

Or if you go down there to clean the oil off of sea birds, someone needs to safely dispose of the rags you used to clean each bird and someone else needs to train you and other volunteers to handle the birds in such a way that they don't injure you and you don't injure them.

There's a lot of secondary effort and logistics involved to support the volunteers who "just show up."

I agree, there is no way knowing what damage you could do to yourself or others without proper training.
I am qualified in the use of poisons, you wouldn’t believe some of the stupid things I have seen done.

[crazin]

Another way of helping out can be in encouraging people that you know to keep their vacations in the Gulf region. It sounds silly, but tourism is a major industry for the beachy areas down there. I just got back from spending some time in the Tampa area and even their tourism industry was feeling a threatening effect from the spill.