BUFFALO, N.Y. (WKBW) — Good Neighbors are doing their part to help people hundreds of miles away.
The people of Jackson, Mississippi spent almost two months under a boil water advisory.
This is all due to contamination concerns in the local water supply.
7 News' Pheben Kassahun shares the steps Western New Yorkers are taking to help.
The Urban Redemption Foundation (TURF) founder and CEO, Cambridge Boyd said, "Residents being without drinkable water in 2022, we felt the need to respond to Flint. My office said, 'let's do it again!'"
Operation H2O: Jackson, MS will soon be heading to the capital city, in hopes of giving residents access to clean drinking water and supplies.
The recent water crisis there has left most residents without running water for days, chronic line breaks and more than 300 boil water notices in the past two years.
The most recent was Monday, Sept. 26.
Boyd said, "We have to make awareness to this because this can happen in Buffalo, and I live on the premise of 'Them today. You tomorrow.' So, we want to do our part and being the City of Good Neighbors, you know that other people out there would want to partner with us, but we feel the need to do our part to help them out."
That is why Boyd is teaming up with a church down in Jackson to send supplies and hoping the church there can take a step back while Boyd and his crew bring in some Buffalo Strong relief efforts.
Boyd said, "The Jackson Revival Center. It's a great organization/church down there who we have partnered with, who will help us distribute. We are actually helping them. Not even them helping us, we are helping them to help distribute and to eat because people have been working nonstop since this happened."
The team of four from Buffalo will leave early Thursday morning for the 17-hour drive to Jackson.
They will arrive and distribute on Friday and Saturday, then head back to Buffalo on Sunday.
The organization is still accepting monetary donations ahead of the trip. Donations can be sent by heading to TURF's website or by sending money via the organization's Cash App at $Turfoundation. Note: There is one 'F' in the organization's Cash App name.
All of this could not be done without the help of 501(c)3 nonprofit, Every Bottom Covered.
"We are able to send some face and body wipes, just because again, if you can't use the water, it's important that there's other ways to cleanse yourself. We have some towels, some soap that we are sending down," Every Bottom Covered founder and executive director, Raziya Hill said.
This mission is personal for Hill, since she has close family who were born and raised in Jackson.
"I know that water has been a crisis there for a long time. This is not a new issue. So, it's very important that we took some supplies that we had here in our warehouse and that we aided 'Turf' making sure that they were able to take some supplies down on behalf of Buffalo," Hill said.
