Twenty-seven years strong

The Patriarchs

This ministry began in the heart of Larry Williamson, the founder and president. He knew ROA needed strong partners and enlisted two patriarchs: Fred Foster and James Kilgore. The dream of helping hurting people was foremost in their minds but remained largely hidden from the eyes of others. Those who needed help received it; that was all the thanks needed. Others joined the movement over the years. For those moments when unthinkable tragedy happens, we are there. For the past 25+ years, Reach Out America has raced to disasters, partnering with local and national organizations and calling on the body of Christ.

Reach Out America has sent over one million pounds of relief supplies to those in need. At FEMA’s direction, we have managed the warehouse and distribution points for its entire New Jersey and then New York operations. Reach Out America was responsible for distributing 2 million pounds of supplies and the 40,000 square foot distribution area of West Virginia. We also distributed 700,000 pounds of relief supplies during the recent flooding throughout Louisiana.

Since 1995, ROA has distributed over 100 Million dollars worth of products over a wide range of disasters, from Monterey, Mexico to the latest hurricane to hit our coastlines. We have served in Mexico, Haiti, and the Caribbean, providing resources to help communities recover from disasters. We have served in tornadoes in Oklahoma, Missouri, Kentucky, and other states, fires in California and Colorado, floods in Nebraska, Florida, North Carolina, Houston, and Louisiana, and dams breaking in  Michigan. We have coordinated volunteers to help repair and rebuild churches, homes, and communities. We have partnered with many other organizations to help feed volunteers, city workers, emergency linemen, and communities impacted by disasters.

In almost every disaster, we established community PODs or Points of Distribution. Using local volunteers, we have been a conduit for major donors to funnel resources directly into a ravaged community. Our staff and local volunteers organize for easy distribution, and then, working with and through the local Emergency Management Organizations, we provide that in open distribution to the community. Depending on the disaster's size and scope, we establish community PODs throughout the area, use a hub and spoke approach to deliver emergency supplies to our hub, and then distribute it to our smaller community hubs for broader distribution. We find community partners, whether corporate or mom-and-pop organizations, willing to help us temporarily use the equipment for distribution and leverage local goodwill to serve that community.

Partners and cooperation have been vital for us to have an oversized impact, whether it had been the Red Cross, Church World Service, Catholic Charities providing resources that we could distribute for them, or ROA providing food to a local Red Cross shelter that was temporarily overwhelmed and short on food supplies and needed a truckload of food, we work with partners, old and new to provide resiliency to that community.

We have coordinated in and out-of-state volunteers to come and tarp roofs, muck out homes, and help rebuild and restore not just houses but hope in a damaged community.

Our president, Larry Williamson, spent several years in New Orleans coordinating with build teams to help rebuild homes and restore lives that flood waters had displaced due to Hurricane Katrina. He, a local pastor, and South Texas District Superintendent Ken Gurley coordinated a massive effort to find, feed, and clothe people devastated by the flooding of Houston due to two back-to-back hurricanes that hit the area with massive rainfall. Together they coordinated about 75 semi-loads of emergency supplies in partnership with schools, emergency management organizations, and other community partners in the area.

Our history is full of ROA personnel and volunteers to work to bring not just emergency supplies into ravaged communities but hope, love, and kindness on families’ worst days.