Rebecca (Hage) Thomley ’81 ’83 is leading a team of volunteers on a relief mission to hurricane-ravaged Haiti.
Rebecca (Hage) Thomley ’81 ’83, founder of Headwaters Relief Organization.
Headwaters Relief Organization, which Thomley founded in 2005, is sending 11 volunteers Wednesday to the island nation southeast of Cuba.
Volunteers are assembling hygiene kits today at the organization’s Golden Valley offices.
Online, the organization is soliciting donations for food, hygiene kits, chlorine tablets and other supplies.
Hurricane Matthew crossed Haiti’s southern peninsula earlier this week, leaving death and destruction in its wake. Death tolls vary, but are already in the hundreds.
President Barack Obama has dispatched a force of 350 military personnel, which is expected to arrive Saturday, according to Navy Rear Adm. Cedric Pringle, commander of the Joint Task Force Matthew.
Headwaters Relief Organization has worked previously in Haiti, most notably following the January 2010 earthquake that killed 220,000, injured 300,000 and displaced 1.5 million people. It has responded to U.S. disasters, including a tornado outbreak in Oklahoma.
A clinical psychologist, Thomley is president and CEO of Orion Associates and four sister companies that serve people with disabilities, the elderly, and their families. Headwaters employees can take paid leave to work at Headwaters and other community organizations.
Thomley holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a bachelor’s degree in rehabilitation counseling from St. Cloud State.
She is the daughter of Marya Owston Hage ’71, a 2016 inductee into the Minnesota Women Business Owners Hall of Fame.
Satellite image of Hurricane Matthew crossing Haiti’s southern peninsula. Oct. 4 image courtesy of NASA.
