700 volunteers headed to Cedar Rapids to help with flood recovery

More than 700 volunteers from across the United States and Canada will be in Cedar Rapids over the next six weeks to help rebuild homes damaged or destroyed by the 2008 flood.

The humanitarian agency Church World Service is working with 10 national faith-based disaster response groups in bringing volunteers to Cedar Rapids to help with flood recovery. Some of the first volunteers will be in Cedar Rapids today.

The volunteer groups will be working with local agencies such as Block by Block, the Linn Area Long-Term Recovery Coalition, Presbytery of East Iowa and Lutheran Services in Iowa.

The project, called Neighborhood: Cedar Rapids, will build upon Church World Service's earlier project, Neighborhood: New Orleans, which helped rebuild more than a dozen homes in Lake Pontchartrain after Hurricane Katrina.

Many of the rebuilding efforts of Neighborhood: Cedar Rapids will be focused in the Time Check area.