The Daily Northwestern
The devastation Hurricane Katrina inflicted on New Orleans and its surrounding area prompted many Northwestern students to volunteer their time to help restore the region. Northwestern’s Alternative Student Breaks sent three different groups to the Gulf Coast over Spring Break.
“The scope of the tragedy and the scope of student interest led us to do three trips this spring,” said Weinberg senior Mercedes Stickler, one of two program directors for ASB at NU.
According to Stickler, many NU students requested to volunteer on the Gulf Coast immediately after Katrina, but the damage was so severe that during Winter Break relief organizations were not yet accepting aid from student groups.
ASB sent students to three volunteer organizations in the Gulf Coast region: Emergency Communities, Common Ground and UMCR: Vermillion Parish. Two student site leaders headed the three groups of 12 students each to the affected area.
Communication senior Kate Doehring was one of the site leaders for the Emergency Communities group helping in New Orleans.
“I felt like being in New Orleans was really timely, and they really needed a lot of help down there,” Doehring said.
Doehring and her team spent the week camped out in a parking lot behind a community center in St. Bernard’s Parish, La. Because there were no small businesses open in the area, the volunteers provided three meals a day for roughly 300 local residents. They also maintained a “free store” for general supplies and a health station with vitamins and even massages given by volunteers.
The meals were served in the ‘Made With Love Cafe,’ and according to Doehring, “it really was made with love. We wanted to give a place for the residents to escape the devastation.”
In the nearby 9th Ward, a low-income area of New Orleans, Communication sophomore Maureen Johannigman and her group worked with Common Ground and lived in the library of an old elementary school with no working electricity. The team cleaned out damaged houses.
“Everything in the house was just disgusting,” Johannigman said. “The mold and water had to be removed.”
Each house essentially had to be gutted, leaving only the frame for later rebuilding. The team from NU cleaned out two houses during the trip.
Though the two tenants of the first house had died in the hurricane, the owners of the second were present as the team worked to clean out their house and, according to Johannigman, were extremely appreciative.
ASB sent a third volunteer group to Abbeville, La., with UMCR: Vermillion Parish to rebuild homes of the elderly and physically handicapped. The group was able to work alongside residents of the homes, painting, flooring and repairing sheet rock.
All three volunteer teams helped several people from the New Orleans area, but team members said the job of rebuilding is far from finished.
“I hope ASB continues to take trips to New Orleans, because it’s going to take so long to rebuild,” Johannigman said.
Despite the work remaining, Johannigman said the overall experience was positive.
“It was one of the coolest things I’ve done at Northwestern,” she said.
Reach Maureen Rohn at [email protected].
