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To the Pastor or Congregational
Leaders / Neighborhood Association Leaders, My name is Rick
Weil, and I�m a Sociology Professor at LSU in Baton Rouge. I�d like to
offer your church or neighborhood association a survey of your members �
their needs, and how you can help them return and rebuild. The survey
is conducted by the LSU Survey Lab. I developed the
survey for my own Jewish community; and the New Orleans & Baton Rouge
Jewish Federations are doing it with our members. There is no
charge, because the development is finished, and the survey is on the web,
ready to use. It will cost you very
little effort, because at a minimum, you only need to post an announcement in
a newsletter or an email and ask your members to take the survey on the LSU
Survey Lab website. I�ll produce a
report of the results for you that will help you in your recovery efforts. We follow the
strictest measures of privacy and confidentiality at LSU. I certainly
wanted to help and not harm my own community, and we�ll do the same for you. I am offering
this survey for two reasons. First, I did it for my own community and
want to make it available to others. I chair my congregation�s
hurricane relief committee � perhaps for similar reasons as you: I didn�t
want to just stand by and not do something. Secondly, I�m a professor,
and we do research. This is important research. We�ve been
offering the survey to other membership organizations, beginning with
faith-based. So far, a number of denominations and churches are doing it,
as are neighborhood associations, service providers, and other nonprofits, in
the multi-parish Greater New Orleans area.�
Also, WWOZ will do it with displaced N.O. musicians. You can see more
information about the survey on this web page, www.lsu.edu/faculty/fweil/KatrinaResearch.html,
under the title, �Reconstituting Community�. You�ll see the
questionnaire, a Q&A page for participants, sample announcements for your
members, ideas for easy distribution, & other things. (Another way
to find this web page is to go to www.rickweil.com,
and click on the link to �Post-Katrina� at the top of the page.) I�d be very happy
to have your church or neighborhood association participate; and I�ll be
happy to work with you in using the results. To me, it�s great to be
able to put my research into the hands of people who can actually use it to
help their members! Please contact me
with any questions, and I�ll be happy to tell you more. Best, Rick Weil Frederick
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