MIAMI \u2013 Even on the best of days, things can go awry on Vieques, the island off Puerto Rico\u2019s eastern coast. Water and power supplies can be cut, groceries may or may not be available, but people just help each other get by. So when a natural disaster the likes of Hurricane Maria happens, everyone pulls together the way they\u2019re used to doing.<\/p>\n

\u201cVieques is almost an indescribable place for most people. If you haven\u2019t been there, if you haven\u2019t lived there, it\u2019s hard to understand it,\u201d says Stephen Mueller, a Principal of the aid group ViequesLove who called the island home for three years. \u201cThere is something about the island, the community, the people there that\u2019s just very different than what most of us have experienced.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since ViequesLove was formed the night that Maria struck Puerto Rico, it\u2019s been juggling all manner of requests for assistance.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve gotten a lot of very interesting asks,\u201d Mueller says in this interview with Beet.TV. \u201cThe most recent one that we did is we successfully got two radiators down there specific to the generators for water sanitation,\u201d a route that stretched from Atlanta to Miami to the Puerto Rico mainland to Vieques.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been lucky that we\u2019ve been able to use private planes to get things down there,\u201d Mueller adds. \u201cThere are a lot of moving pieces. It takes a lot of organization and creativity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Having been a resident and owned a business on Vieques, Mueller is well versed in the day in and day out milieu.<\/p>\n

\u201cSomething as simple as going to the postal box requires about 30 minutes of your time, because inevitably you\u2019re going to meet plenty of people that you know, and you all stop and chat, ask how their day\u2019s going. It\u2019s this huge sense of community and involvement.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the three years that we lived there, it was probably one of the best times of our lives and probably one of the few places that have truly felt like home.”<\/p>\n

As of Nov. 6, ViequesLove had raised $873,696 from 7,084 donors via its GoFundMe<\/a> website.<\/p>\n

Stand With Puerto, The Industry Steps Up\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

This video reports on the pressing issues facing Puerto Rico and the organizations that are having an impact.\u00a0It is part of a media industry initiative titled Stand With Puerto Rico<\/a>. It is organized by Beet.TV and Omnicom Media Group along with founding partners\u00a0AT&T AdWorks and Teads.\u00a0Please find additional videos from the series here<\/a>.\u00a0The series was recorded in Miami at the Festival of Media\/LATAM on October 30.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MIAMI \u2013 Even on the best of days, things can go awry on Vieques, the island off Puerto Rico\u2019s eastern coast. Water and power supplies can be cut, groceries may or may not be available, but people just help each other get by. So when a natural disaster the likes of Hurricane Maria happens, everyone […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"mc4wp_mailchimp_campaign":[]},"categories":[6849],"tags":[3851,5111,5938,6857,6858,6873,6874,6878],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48753"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48753\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}