Member Stories: AACRAO Volunteers Participate in Post-Katrina Service Project in New Orleans
Bill Haid
On Saturday, Oct 27, 2007 , I joined about 50 other AACRAO volunteers in New Orleans for a Post-Katrina service project. This opportunity was offered as part of the Strategic Enrollment Management conference. With the help of Kathy Plante, the Registrar at University of New Orleans and a Katrina survivor herself, we volunteers met and took a bus to a very old school building in the garden district of New Orleans.
This project was organized and led by a group from the organization City Year. The City Year staff were predominately young college-aged people. As we signed in, we were assigned somewhat randomly to nine work groups. Each work group had a City Year staff leader. I was assigned to painting exterior doors. There were 27 of them at this school.
As we moved into our work groups there were other groups of volunteers arriving. There were groups from AmeriCore NCCC, the University of New Orleans, and Louisiana State University (LSU). There were about 120 volunteers all together. One of the neat things about this experience was working alongside people from a variety of places. I didn't know this before, but Oct 27 was "National Make a Difference Day", which explained a lot of things about who was there this day and why.
Before we started working, we were brought together for introductory comments by the leaders, a pep talk and thanks. We learned that the school was not damaged by the storm, but had been shut down about 10 years ago as it was no longer fit for students and teachers. After Katrina, so many schools were damaged they had to reopen this school to accommodate the students. The school had been operating for two years now since the storm and we were there to finally give it a facelift. There was major painting on the exterior and interior and the playground.
I was very impressed with the organization of the effort. They were prepared and organized. I got the idea that they do projects every Saturday. I later learned from their website that they are many educational and community support efforts throughout the week and service projects like this on weekends.
City Year is a national organization with local groups at about 25 different large cities. The staff members from the City Year organization had arrived early and had been working on prep and getting materials into place. Someone with creative ability had drawn out the murals and the playground patterns and all of this made it very easy for the volunteers to really get a lot done. I hope the pictures give you an idea of the school both before and after and the volunteers.
I hope that we can return with another group and have another opportunity to "make a difference" for an area that is so badly in need.
Note: This work could not have been achieved without the help of Troy Peloquin of the Recovery School District who helped coordinate the volunteer activities. AACRAO would like to thank the meeting participant volunteers who took time out of their schedules to help serve this community.
