The New Waveland Café and New Waveland Clinic together formed a disaster response center consisting of a combination café, soup kitchen, medical clinic, donation center, and market, that operated free of charge from September 5 to December 1, 2005 in immediate Post-Katrina Mississippi Gulf Coast in Waveland, Hancock County, Mississippi.[1][2][3][4][5][6] The cafe and clinic were founded in response to Hurricane Katrina and provided free food and free medical care to hurricane victims for three months. They were located in tents in the parking lot of Fred's Department Store at 790 Hwy 90 in Waveland, across the street from the destroyed and gutted Waveland Police Department.[7] The New Waveland Cafe served three free meals every day to thousands of residents and volunteers. The New Waveland Clinic provided free health care to over 5,500 patient contacts. As well, a group of hippies and Christians came together to form a unique group which worked together to provide emergency relief.
One of the great ironies in the landscape of Katrina recovery efforts is the success of the New Waveland Café
Despite rain, volunteers from the New Waveland Cafe paraded along Highway 90 in a rousing goodbye to the community on the cafe's last day of operation
With years of experience serving throngs at festivals, many do-gooder hippies converged on Mississippi's Gulf Coast after the hurricanes to cook for the needy
Dubbed the New Waveland Café, the operation didn't just feed residents. It encouraged them to participate in cooking, cleaning, and other details that went into running the aid effort, transforming the helped into helpers
"We probably served 500-600 people," Dawn Hundt said "We would get up and start cooking and go until we dropped." And, thus, the New Waveland Café was born.
"It's a cumulative effect here," said Claire Gilbert, a New Orleans surgical technician who works in a Louisiana occupational medical practice and volunteered at the New Waveland Clinic, a tent shelter complex that just closed in Mississippi.
At the New Waveland Cafe, a combination soup kitchen, donation depot and medical clinic for survivors of Hurricane Katrina, volunteer groups of God-fearing churchgoers and free-spirit hippies have formed a bond - a result, they say, of working together toward the greater good
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