A city-wide relief effort will take place Friday to help the victims of the April 27 tornadoes that swept through Alabama and Georgia.

People can drop off items that they want to donate to the relief effort at two locations on Friday. From 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. a large tractor-trailer truck will be parked in the Elizabeth Bradley Turner Center for Continuing Education’s lot on East Lindsay Drive.

Later that night, the truck will be driven to 1100 block of Broadway in downtown Columbus for the Uptown Concert series and donations will be taken from 6:30-8:30 p.m. Big Woody and the Splinters will play starting at 7 p.m.

“From what I’ve been told, they don’t need clothes so much any more,” said John Lester, the Columbus State University assistant vice president for university relations. “They need food, tents and tarps, grills, wheelbarrows. They need things like those big plastic Rubbermaid storage bins to put things in when they find them again. They need diapers, toiletries, dog and cat food, hammers, nails and other tools.”

He said inquiries from Uptown Columbus, student organizations and other groups suggested many people were interested in helping.

“We’ve done this all through Facebook,” Lester said.

When CSU posted the Facebook page (Columbus (GA) Tornado Relief Effort) last Tuesday, response was fast, he said.

“A woman posted that she is going to drive from South Carolina with stuff that her Girl Scout troop collected,” Lester said. “TIC Credit Union said they will work a six-hour shift.”

“Facebook is pretty powerful,” said Lisa Rowe, director of community relations for Uptown Columbus.

There was a personal reason for Uptown Columbus to get involved.

Executive director Richard Bishop’s daughter is a student at the University of Alabama.

“She’s fine,” Rowe said. “She did have to move, but she came out much better than other people. She’s fine and she’s safe.”

When the damage reports started coming out, Rowe said Uptown wanted to do something.

“It (the collaboration) was a natural fit with our continued partnership with CSU,” Rowe said. “John was the one who took the ball and rolled with it.”

Lester said it went both ways. “She called and said, ‘Hey, do you think we can do anything?’ And then it was ‘If you can do this, we can do that.’”

Both are hoping to have so many supplies that they’ll need to take two trips to the donated warehouse in Birmingham where supplies are given out.

The warehouse belongs to Toomers for Tuscaloosa group, Lester said.

“That would be a good problem to have,” Rowe said. “If we have to, we can use our office or unused space downtown. We will take care of that (any extra supplies) until the truck returns and has to go back.”