Homeschool Flood Victim Relief

In late June, several communities in Northwest Iowa were affected by catastrophic flooding. Many families suffered damage to their homes, and some lost everything.

While local homeschool community and support groups often quickly step in to meet needs like this, in this case, almost all of the families in this area are also suffering from the disaster. 

Our Homeschool Iowa Regional Representative in Region 1 (Northwest Iowa) shared with us about the specific needs of two families in that area who had extensive home damage and had lost their homeschool curricula. 

In response, our Regional Representatives Team worked together on a donation opportunity to meet these needs. 

You can be a part of this effort
to assist these fellow homeschoolers.

Please read the descriptions below of two families in need. 

We have a family of six affected by the recent flooding.

Our basement was a complete loss. Among the things we'll need to replace and rebuild are our laundry facilities, furnace, water heater, two bedrooms (where our teenagers desperately loved their own space), a toy room, and storage areas.

We are currently back in our home after being displaced for 13 days. We still do not have hot water and are waiting patiently for many repairs.

We are all currently living on our main floor, but it does not provide the space for us to stay this way long term, unfortunately.

We are grateful our home is still standing, but we need to work as fast as possible to get our home rebuilt.

It would be such a blessing to have some help to get our curricula to continue homeschooling! Thank you so much to anyone who feels led to give.

Hello! We are David and Caitlin Roush. We have seven children, ages from 16 down to 6.

We were recently impacted by the June 22, 2024 flood in Spencer, Iowa. We were out of town that Saturday when the flooding occurred, so we couldn't pull anything out of the basement beforehand. We couldn't make it back to Spencer due to flooded roads until later in the evening Sunday. When we got there, the water in the basement was four feet deep. You can see the waterline on the walls went up 5.5 feet. Outside of our home, you can see the waterline on our garage reached 1.5 feet.

It was unbelievable seeing the chaos that had happened in the basement. All of our major appliances had been under water: furnace, electrical box, water heater, washer, and dryer. Our water heater was completely tipped over. The washer had floated up and broken a drainpipe to our utility sink, which may have helped us with draining water from the house since where it broke was closer to the floor.

We saved as much as we could: taking apart each appliance, taking a leaf blower to it to dry it out, and spraying all the wiring with oil to prevent corrosion. I am thankful to say so far everything is up and running except our furnace. It ran for a week, and then just totally crashed, so we just put in an order for a new one.

All of our homeschool curricula for the upcoming year was stored in the basement. All of it was destroyed.

We love to be outdoors, and we stored all of our camping and backpacking gear in our basement. We saved what we could, but much of it began molding immediately. Since our laundry room was downstairs, we had built a family closet for all of our kids' clothing. The four younger kids' clothes were not salvageable. The three older kids' clothes were hung up higher, so we saved what we could of theirs. We had family photo books in fire safes, but the safes did not keep out the water. Six of our basement windows were broken and are in the process of being replaced. We also had to replace the stairs going to the basement.

We have been so thankful for family members that are knowledgeable when it came to saving our appliances, rebuilding our stairs, fixing our foundation, and installing windows. We're also thankful for our community's help. They have taken the burden off of cooking each day because they have been providing free hot meals around town. They have had distribution centers that have helped with replacing clothing for the kids, and provided everyday supplies, like hygiene products, cleaning supplies, water, etc. After bleaching the walls and floors several times ourselves, we had a volunteer group called the Samaritan's Purse come in and sanitize the basement with a mold inhibitor. We have taken trips to local thrift stores to try and replace furniture and kids' clothes. Our current needs include getting the furnace installed and getting our curricula replaced. We've been keeping our eye out at thrift stores for bookshelves, tables, and reference books that we have to replace.

We need to fix the cement floor and get carpet purchased and back down in half the basement. We'll also need to purchase paint for the walls and spray that on, install three more basement windows, and then just organize and haul everything back downstairs.

Thank you to anyone who can assist us through this project with replacing our curricula.

If God leads you to give toward these families' need for replacement homeschool curricula, click the button below to donate.

You can give $20 or more,
whatever amount you feel led to donate.

Please note your donation is NOT tax-deductible.

Thank you for showing love to Iowa homeschool families in need!

Please use our Contact Us form if you have questions about this effort. 

We invite you to investigate additional options for assistance in times of need, inclusing the HSLDA Compassion Grant program. 

Thanks to many generous donors, the target goals were met for both flood victim families. We are very grateful to each person who contributed to this effort, and we know the families who will receive these gifts are, too! 

If you would like to partner with Homeschool Iowa by making a general donation toward our efforts to encourage and equip homeschooling families in Iowa and to promote and protect home education in our state, please use the button link below.