As hurricane season kicks off, Grounded Boots Relief is moving fast toward a critical goal: assembling and pre-positioning 500 emergency supply buckets: each designed to support a person or family through the first 72 hours after a disaster.

These aren’t theoretical prep kits. They’re boots-on-the-ground bundles of survival, stocked with exactly what we’ve seen people need most when the power’s out, roads are cut off, and resources are thin. Each one is packed with practical care: MREs to sustain energy, electrolyte mixes to fight dehydration, feminine hygiene products often overlooked in relief, and that one item everyone forgets until they need it: can openers.

Inside, you’ll also find basics like toothbrushes, soap, wipes, emergency blankets, garbage bags, instant coffee, candy for morale, flashlights with batteries, and a whistle to call for help.

Our goal is to have all 500 buckets assembled in advance, ready to load and roll as soon as a storm hits. No scrambling. No last-minute supply runs. Just swift, effective response in the hours when it matters most.

We’re looking for help: donors, sponsors, and connectors- people who can get us in the room with manufacturers, suppliers, and funders who share our commitment to doing the hard work without fanfare. We’re also accepting direct donations of kit items, financial support, and even in-kind contributions like storage, transport, or bulk purchasing access.

It’s a big lift. But it’s not impossible. Because it’s not about Grounded Boots Relief. It’s about the person on the receiving end of that bucket, standing in mud, trying to keep their kid warm, trying to stay calm, trying to figure out what comes next.

In the not-too-distant future, we’re also hoping to host a hands-on volunteer event to help build the buckets together. Once funding and logistics line up, we’ll post details in our newsletter, so stay tuned.

If you want to help fill these buckets- literally or figuratively- reach out. You might not know whose life you’ll impact. But we guarantee it will matter.

If you’ve seen our trailer around town or out on a back road near an impacted area, you may have noticed something new: our logo, freshly branded and proudly displayed.

This isn’t about self-promotion, but rather about visibility. When the Grounded Boots Relief trailer shows up, it means help is here or on the way. Whether we’re in the thick of long-term recovery here in Western North Carolina or deployed somewhere else entirely, that logo signals that someone stayed, someone showed up, and someone is working.

Big thanks to Super Sign Rob at The Super Sign Guy, who made it happen. He gave us a solid rate and treated the job like it mattered... because it does.

So if you see us parked somewhere, whether downtown, roadside, or deep in the field, know this: we’re close by. Come say hi. Newton’s usually got time for a few pets.

Increased Menstrual Product Inaccessibility During Crises
Humanitarian crises, natural disasters, and the COVID-19 pandemic have significantly reduced the availability of menstrual products, leading to heightened period poverty.
Source: nih.gov

In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Helene, we were incredibly fortunate. Countless individuals and organizations stepped up to provide essential items, things we could distribute quickly and directly to the communities who needed them most. People found us. They gave generously. And because of that, we were able to serve.

But one thing I couldn’t help but notice, outside of a few major organizations, was the absence of experienced and structured, on-the-ground distribution support in those earliest days. What that meant, in practice, was that the responsibility often fell on local groups and churches. Groups whose missions had nothing to do with disaster response. Groups without the trucks, the systems, or the bandwidth. And yet, they showed up. They made do. They found a way because their neighbors needed them. That shouldn't be the default.

At Grounded Boots Relief, we want to be the experienced team that shows up so locals don’t have to carry the whole load. We want to be the outside support that isn’t sidelined by the same devastation. We want those directly impacted to be able to focus on their own families, their own homes, their own healing, without also having to run a distribution center out of a borrowed garage.

Of course, we’ll still onboard locals during disaster response. We always will. But we refuse to build a system that requires those who just lost everything to become first responders for everyone else.

That’s why pre-storm volunteer onboarding is critical. A lot of folks think that submitting a volunteer form ties them into some mandatory call-to-action. It doesn’t. What it does is give us a list of people who are willing to be contacted when a deployment happens. No obligation. Just a chance to serve if timing and circumstances allow.

Not everyone can drop everything at a moment’s notice. That’s okay. But the more folks we’ve connected with beforehand, the more likely we are to have a strong, ready team when the time comes. If we have a thousand volunteers on our list and just 10% can go, that’s still a hundred boots on the ground. That’s a difference.

If you’ve been thinking about getting involved, now’s the time. Storm season is here. And when the wind shifts, we want to be ready to move: fast, organized, and grounded in purpose.

John S. Badger