Katrina relief trip planned

Faculty, students traveling to Ninth Ward for Thanksgiving

By Emily Nilsen, contributing writer
Posted on November 8, 2007

Two years after Hurricane Katrina slammed the Gulf Coast, JMU is sending 110 volunteers to New Orleans. Last Thanksgiving they gutted houses; this year they’re building them.

The group will spend five days in the Ninth Ward, the residential area where homes were submerged in minutes after a levee broke, making it one of the worst of the areas hit by Katrina.

The group of JMU students, in addition to faculty, family members and local high school students, aim to bring “some normalcy” to lives of the residents of the Ninth Ward, said Mary Slade, JMU faculty co-leader of her sixth Katrina relief trip. The group will travel 17 hours to New Orleans in charter buses and stay in the Ninth Ward in a renovated abandoned school provided by the National Relief Network.

Now that the majority of houses are gutted or torn down, the volunteers will help build new homes in their place. Sakura Kone, media coordinator for Common Ground Collective, said many of the houses in the Ninth Ward are under contract for repairs or total rebuilds. Most of the JMU volunteers will work in these houses hanging drywall.

Slade works with National Relief Network and Common Ground Collective to locate the jobs.

The group will also restore parks and playgrounds. The flooding destroyed New Orleans’ natural habitat.

“All soil in New Orleans is poisonous,” Kone said.

Restoring playgrounds will give children safe places to play away from their now-toxic backyards. The Ninth Ward was the most impoverished area in New Orleans, Slade said. Its residents don’t just want to rebuild their old home.

“They want to come back better,” she said.

There is a fee for participation on the trip. Junior Justin Broughman, the student co-leader, said the cost to go on the trip is $444 per volunteer, but donations and fundraising are expected to bring the cost down to about $175.

Their major fundraising project was selling JMU wristbands. The purple and gold wristbands cost $4, and were on sale during Homecoming. The group also received a donation of tools from the Harrisonburg Lowe’s, which helps compensate for the shortage of volunteer tools in New Orleans, Slade said.

The volunteer turnout for the trip was so great Slade had to stop adding names to the waiting list.

“JMU is a really great campus to talk about service,” she said. “It’s unique because of its student body.”

Broughman, who is embarking on his second Katrina relief trip, said recovery will take time.

“At least another decade for New Orleans to witness the level of prosperity it once saw,” he said.

Assuming no other hurricane comes through the city again, the possibility of a Hurricane Katrina repeat doesn’t dissuade Broughman from continuing the work.

“I don’t believe in leaving people out to dry,” Broughman said.

Still, the Ninth Ward’s hazy future won’t stop Slade and her army of volunteers.

“It’s not my responsibility to decide if someone can rebuild their home,” she said. “If they want to rebuild their house, we’ll be there to help them.”