Sociology class volunteers in a city in need

“Entering the city, as we passed the Superdome, I snapped a picture of the dome with a billboard advertisement in front of it that read ‘utopia.’”

But for Amanda Edwards, a student volunteer from Texas A&M University, New Orleans looked far from a ‘utopia.’ Edwards spent her 2008 spring break volunteering in Louisiana after the devastation of the nation’s most costly disaster just three years ago.

Hurricane Katrina killed more than 1,600 men, women and children and left a shocked nation looking at miles of wrecked homes, mud and debris. Katrina put 80 percent of New Orleans under water, destroyed 200,000 homes and displaced about one million people.

While governmental agencies are helping to rebuild in the wake of disaster, nonprofit organizations are stepping up to the plate as well.

Grassroots organizations rebuild New Orleans

One such nonprofit organization in New Orleans is the Common Ground Collective, a community-initiated volunteer organization offering assistance, mutual aid and support.

The Common Ground Collective was established in the first week after Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans. It was the first organization to open up a medical clinic and provide immediate assistance (food, water, supplies) to the thousands of low-income residents unable to evacuate.

Texas A&M students join the effort

For the past two spring breaks, Kathryn Henderson, associate professor of sociology, took students to New Orleans as part of her special topics course, Sociology 489. The course introduced students to using qualitative research methods and becoming familiar with the unique history and sociology of the city, before and after hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Students in the 2007 group volunteered with Common Ground, staying in a three-story brick school in Bywater, where survivors had been stranded. Throughout the two weeks, the students participated in gutting houses, building a Habitat for Humanity home, working on bioremediation, volunteering in a women’s or family shelter, and/or helping to cook for the 500 college students and local residents volunteering with Common Ground.

Students experienced Louisiana culture through participating in a jazz Mass and a Baptist service, visiting a Voodoo temple, and attending a Mardi-Gras style Italian-Irish parade in St. Barnard Parish. They viewed an IMAX film about wetlands destruction, took a swamp tour, and witnessed the loss of wetlands, first hand.

Students in the 2008 group volunteered in Louisiana with Habitat for Humanity in Center City, New Orleans and in St. Bernard Parish.

"We stayed at their Camp Hope, located in a former middle-school, south of New Orleans in St. Bernard Parish, which was 100% destroyed in its entire infrastructure by Katrina, but has received little press coverage," said Kathryn Henderson. "Our work site, where students worked on framing the walls of one house and the roof of another was in Center City, a historical Black neighborhood between the historical French Quarter and the affluent Garden District."

Over the summer a group from the 2007 class compiled an anthology retelling of the painstakingly slow rebuilding of areas hit by the hurricanes and telling the stories hurricane survivors asked them to tell.

“The only way I can really describe what New Orleans was to me is through the words ‘intense learning experience.’ I went into New Orleans not knowing what to expect, and I came out of it learning so much more than I ever could have expected,” said JoLeah Stiles, a member of the March 2007 New Orleans group and a senior communication major.

The three year anniversary of the devastation Hurricane Katrina left on the Gulf Coast is fast approaching and although rebuilding remains spotty, many significant steps have been taken in making New Orleans the “home” it once was to thousands of people.

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Contact: Holly Lambert, hollyalyselambert@libarts.tamu.edu, 979.862.4879