New Orleans Habitat - Operation Home Delivery Blog

Penn State Joins the Rebuilding Effort

Kudos to the Penn State Nittany Lions Women's Golf Team, which is holding a golf tournament to support NOAHH's rebuilding efforts.  They have also pledged to send 25 coaches from the Athletic Department to New Orleans to help build the house after the money is raised.  Talk about team-building!  Hey, JoePa, over here!!

For more information about Penn State's “Team Build” please contact head coach Denise St. Pierre via email at dxs10@psu.edu. The team's website is www.gopsusports.com.

(UPenn) Quakers Coming to Town

Among the many college students headed to NOLA for Spring Break are Penn Quakers.  But they'll party only a little and build a lot, helping construct Habitat houses with NOAHH, as this article in the Daily Pennsylvanian reports:

While each group will work on one house for the week that they are in New Orleans, many believe that the effect goes beyond a single house. "This is not intended for us to try and rebuild New Orleans in a week. Relative to the impact of Katrina, it's not so much. But no one would expect that out of these students," LaLond said.

Link: dailypennsylvanian.com - Ready to rebuild the Big Easy.

What a great attitude these students have!  We look forward to hosting you, Quakers!

70-Strong North Texas Group Volunteers, Works With NOAHH

Erin Myers, a staff-writer at the Herald-Democrat, of North Texas, accompanied a group of 70 volunteers from Austin College on a mission trip to Southeast Louisiana.  Erin chronicled her journey in a series of articles that appeared in her newspaper.  Their trip culminated in work with NOAHH.

Here are some excerpts:

Jan. 10:

Reading accounts and seeing pictures of the devastation cannot even begin to give one the sense of what things are like here. You can sense the pain everywhere you turn. But the people of Louisiana have a strong spirit. 
...

Jan. 13: 

We took a tour of New Orleans Monday afternoon, and the amount and severity of destruction was overwhelming. I felt like a spectator from the comfort of our warm vans on a caravan through the streets of what was left of a once-beautiful city.

Media reported the destruction of the lower Ninth Ward, an area largely inhabited by the most impoverished of New Orleans residents, but no amount of pictures or video could ever capture what honestly happened here.

Entire houses were reduced to a pile of rubble, and the houses that didn't collapsed floated into one another and lay hodge-podge in the middle of the street. 

Friday, Jan. 20, Erin and the Austin College group joins Habitat on Delachaise Street:

After a week of gutting houses, our troop of 70 finally got the opportunity to rebuild. We worked with Habitat for Humanity in a part of New Orleans that received some flood damage, but not as extensive as the Lower Ninth Ward or St. Barnard Parish.

Everywhere you turn in New Orleans, you see signs urging regrowth and rebirth, and it was something special to be able to contribute to that rejuvenation.

Habitat for Humanity is working all over the city to construct homes to fill the ever-growing need for habitable living space. A second group of volunteers with our group worked most of the afternoon, clearing trash from a six-acre site that Habitat for Humanity purchased to build more than 50 homes within the coming months. Some of the homes will honor requests made before the storm, while others will replace homes lost in the flooding.

New Orleans appears to be on its way back. The French Quarter is alive and well, and Bourbon Street (made famous by Mardi Gras) shows very little sign of what transpired four months ago.

Thank you, Erin!

Students' Work with Habitat Recounted in Local Papers

There have been a bevy of heartening stories recently about college and post-graduate students who are visiting New Orleans and helping to rebuild this great city.  Many have come to New Orleans; others are helping NOAHH and Habitats throughout the Gulf region.

The story of Brenna Wade, a student at Randolph-Macon College in Virginia, is recounted in yesterday's Suffolk (Va.) News-Herald.  Here is an excerpt from the article says about Brenna's trip to the Crescent City:

Wade said the experience will stay with her forever. She’ll never forget the sight of people watching all they had -- family photos, wedding dresses -- get thrown on a soggy pile on the street corner. The fact that many of the people they encountered were still friendly, still hopeful, still projecting a positive attitude, moved Wade.

“It’s very humbling,” she said.

The whole experience has made her want to help people even more, she said. Wade is considering joining a trip during spring break involving Habitat for Humanity. She also wants to spread the message about the circumstances of New Orleans. More people need to look past stereotypes; money helps, but action is the best thing to demonstrate comradeship with the victims, she said.

Meanwhile, the Yale Daily News reports that 23 law students are spending their "intersession break" volunteering with HFH in Slidell and Biloxi, Miss.  These students are getting to see first-hand the devastation that remains after Katrina, but also to experience the hope that Habitat represents. 

We in New Orleans salute you, Brenna and Yalies -- ya'll come back now, ya' hear!

Call to HBCU Alumni -- Join Habitat's Rebuilding Effort

In a guest editorial in this week's Louisiana Weekly - Your Community. Your Newspaper, Ronald Childs, a Chicago-based journalist, encourages alumni of historically-black colleges and universities (HBCU's) to get involved in Habitat for Humanity to rebuild the communities of the Gulf Coast.

HBCU alumni, it's our move. It's long past time to show the world another image. There are 30 black colleges and universities in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama alone, which means that there are thousands of black college students, administrators and alumni associations in those states that can work jointly to affect change. We should be partnering with affected residents and each other, establishing funds, raising money and forming crews to help remove debris and rebuild homes and communities in the region. Phone your local Habitat for Humanity affiliate, or Habitat for Humanity International (in Americus, Georgia), volunteer and let's get it started.

Mr. Childs' article also focuses on the disappointing media coverage that beset post-Katrina New Orleans, and it gathers the unfortunate comments of politicians and national figures regarding the aftermath of the hurricane.  But it has a positive message as well -- the Crescent City will rise again!

Wolverines Join in Cleanup and Rebuilding Effort, from The Michigan Daily

Link: The Michigan Daily.

“People need to do more. It is easy to escape reality — if you don’t watch TV and see what’s going on, it can disappear,” Litt said. “But these families are still trying to piece their lives back together.”

Well said.  The story is about students who joined the Chabad group that worked around Tulane -- and on the Dufossat Street House -- during their Winter Break.