The Occupy Wall Street movement has been incredibly effective in the coordination of volunteers and supplies. In Brooklyn, Occupy Sandy has been coordinating volunteer recovery efforts from St. Jacobi Evangelical Luteran Church in Sunset Park  (5406 Fourth Avenue).

Here’s how the group describes itself on interoccupy.net:  “Occupy Sandy is a coordinated relief effort to help distribute resources and volunteers to help neighborhoods and people affected by Hurricane Sandy. We are a coalition of people and organizations who are dedicated to implementing aid and establishing hubs for neighborhood resource distribution. Members of this coalition are from Occupy Wall Street, 350.org, recovers.org, InterOccupy.net and many individual volunteers.”

From what I understand, the church basically handed itself over to the Occupy volunteers who were ready to donate time, energy and hard work to the relief effort, in the days after Hurricane Sandy. “All those days out in Zucotti Park with no heat and electricity prepared them for times like this – they are experts in how to feed large numbers of people, how to run generators off vegetable oil and how to provide medical care to those in need,” Pastor Ann Kanfield of Greenpoint Reformed Church writes in an email.

If you are interested in volunteering, St. Jacobi Church in Sunset Park and Church of St. Luke and St. Matthew are Occupy Sandy’s primary training and distribution centers. For more information about Occupy Sandy go here.