Lady A donation goes back to storm-damaged community

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Lady Antebellum performing for Henryville High School students Wednesday at the KFC YUM! Center. Staff photo by C.E. Branham

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May 18, 2012

Lady A donation goes back to storm-damaged community

Applications for assistance available at New Hope

By JEROD CLAPP jerod.clapp@newsandtribune.com The News and Tribune Fri May 18, 2012, 05:40 PM EDT

JEFFERSONVILLE — Lady Antebellum’s show has come and gone, but the money they helped raise is about to find its way to the people who need it.

Through proceeds from a Wednesday-night concert from the country music superstars, a donation from Lipton and a personal gift from the band, $285,000 will be available to victims of the March 2 storms to help them rebuild.

Kenton Wooden, director of development for New Hope Services, said families or businesses who need help through storm recovery don’t have a limited amount of time to apply.

“It’ll be available until the funds are gone,” Wooden said. “We don’t have a definitive ending date or timeline. Our goal is to help as many people as possible. If that goes on for an extended period of time, then so be it.”

Joe DeHaven, president and CEO of the Indiana Bankers Association, said when the partnership with his organization, New Washington State Bank, and New Hope Services began after the storms, they didn’t expect to raise as much as they did.

“We started this process without any idea of how much money we would raise,” DeHaven said. “We thought we might get to $50,000, which would have been a huge success. We’ve raised about $65,000 or $70,000 without the money from Lady Antebellum.”

But when the band’s management came in, he was glad to see more help was going to victims across Southern Indiana. All the money goes strictly to storm victims help recovery efforts.

“It just sort of brings tears to your eyes when you see how young the band members are, but how grown up and mature they are to give like this,” DeHaven said.

The applications for monetary support are open for anyone who needs help. They’re available at newhopeservices.org, both locations of New Hope in Jeffersonville, Kids Place in Scottsburg and all branches of the New Washington State Bank.

Wooden said a committee will review the applications weekly to see how to distribute the funds. He said the funds were made available to help as many people as possible.

“We realize that the amount of damage sustained in the location wasn’t solely a residential or business area, it was really such a wide variety of people affected,” Wooden said. “We wanted to try to help people get back to a place where they were before the storms.”