Cross-Cultural Solutions: international volunteer programs around the world

New Rochelle Group Organizes Volunteers for Food Effort

Past the devastation at Ground Zero, and around the corner from the makeshift morgue, bobs The Spirit of New York, a cruise ship docked at the World Financial Center that has been transformed into a 24-hour-a-day respite center for rescue workers.

Volunteers aboard The Spirit provide up to 10,000 meals a day to the thousands of rescue workers who need a break after combing through the rubble from the collapsed World Trade Center or helping load the debris onto trucks to cart it away.

The volunteers have been organized by Cross-Cultural Solutions, a New Rochelle-based non-profit group that took over the task from the American Red Cross Monday.

"For us, we feel a responsibility," said Steven Rosenthal, 35, the group's founder and executive director. "We have programs all over the world, but it feels good to do something at home."

Rosenthal, a 1984 graduate of White Plains High School, began helping with disaster relief on Sept. 13, two days after the World Trade Center towers were rammed by hijacked airplanes.

In the early days of the disaster, civilian volunteers resourceful enough to get through security found plenty to do. Rosenthal, who has worked at refugee camps in Kosovo and Ethiopia, worked with Red Cross staff providing food for rescuers. By the first weekend, all but one of Cross-Cultural Solutions' 15-member staff were volunteering at the site of the collapse.

A week later, the Red Cross turned to Rosenthal and his New Rochelle organization to field calls from volunteers and staff the food operation. Last weekend, Cross-Cultural Solutions set up a phone bank at its Potter Avenue office in New Rochelle and began contacting the hundreds of volunteers who have signed up to help. "It's nice to be able to help,'' said Polly Judson of Larchmont, who began working on the phone bank Tuesday.

This week, the group has organized eight-hour shifts around the clock, staffed with 30 volunteers per shift for food service, and three-hour shifts with 14 volunteers at Pier 59 at Manhattan's Chelsea Piers to load food on the skiff that ferries both the volunteers and food to the cruise ship. The ship will be docked there at least until Oct. 6.

With security tight at the collapse site, the food operation is one of the few opportunities for volunteer work, so Cross-Cultural Solutions has had no trouble filling the spots, Rosenthal said. Volunteers who are selected are warned they could face arrest if they leave the boat to look at the cleanup operation.

"Part of the job is keeping volunteers away,'' said Rosenthal, noting he had a waiting list of more than 700.

While Cross-Cultural Solutions helps organize the relief effort, it is also feeling the impact of the attacks. The group, which this year plans to send about 1,000 volunteers abroad on programs from two weeks to six months to provide humanitarian assistance in China, Ghana, India, Peru, and Russia, has seen a downturn in interest since Sept. 11.

Rosenthal said several volunteers, unwilling to travel to Asia in the wake of the attacks, have canceled trips to India.

In addition, Cross-Cultural Solutions is volunteering the time of four full-time and two part-time staff members on the World Trade Center operation and has yet to embark on a fund-raising effort to recoup its spending. Donations to Cross-Cultural Solutions can be sent to its offices at 47 Potter Ave., New Rochelle NY 10801.

"Before I went down to the site, I was feeling really traumatized by the attack,'' Rosenthal said. "But I have walked out of there with a tremendous sense of hope. I have seen a coming together of the American people."