Dan McCarthy

This is my second trip to the Lower 9^th Ward Village, and I have begun to notice many of the little things that make the village run. The Village depends on volunteers and donations in order to stay running.  It is run by Mack McLendon, a man full of promising ideas. He has so many new ideas and programs that he believes the village could become to change the community. Since getting down here, I have seen the vision of the village move from just that, a vision, to something that has the potential to become a reality. The WPI Habitat for Humanity students who are with us at the Village all have the drive to see something get done here.

At first, I had expected that in the year since we had first toured the community center, some significant changes would have been made. Unfortunately, that was not the case. The building was littered with donated materials that mostly had no use to the Village itself. Mack explained that if ever anyone wanted to make a donation, he couldn’t say no to it because it might end up being valuable. What I found really fascinating about the materials that were lying around the Village is that most of them were donated by movie crews after their sets were done being used. New Orleans had become the location of the most number of movies being filmed in recent years, even surpassing Hollywood, and when sets are offered to the Village, they have to take all of it, and not just the useful things.

Much of what we had done in recent days is clear out the Village of useless things. Once this was accomplished, we had a much better idea of what the space could be used for. The task I took ownership of was reorganizing the library. Mack has thousands of books from all different genres, but they were extremely cluttered and needed more space to be showcased. Part of  rearranging the library was to re construct walls out of bookshelves to make the room bigger and more closed off from the other parts of the community center.

Mack has been extremely influential when it came to my desire to work for a bigger picture than I am a part of. I am proud to be a part of the Village community, and the difference Mack is trying to make here is unbelievable. The vision he has of his community center is one that can have so many different purposes: a recording studio, a computer lab, a game center, a library, a tutoring center, a place to get a GED, as well as running programs that will help students change their diet to be healthier. The problem is that it takes so much to keep this place alive that it is difficult to move forward.

Mack has been studying the way people are affected by disasters, and when he explains all of the things he has seen, some of it is quite scary. One stat that sticks out in my mind is that roughly ten percent of all donations made to a cause actually make it to the people that need it. The rest goes to the overhead of running a relief effort. This seems scary to me. The other fact that made me nervous was that for an entire year after the storm, people who lived in the area originally were not allowed to come home and help rebuild their community. Volunteers were being shipped in from around the country, but people had no say in how their community was rebuilt. This is part of why Mack believes so much in the Village. It has the chance to make the community come together and claim the Lower 9^th Ward for itself.

The pieces are starting to fall in place for the Village, but it is not yet close to achieving the full spectrum of what it wants to be. Any help that anyone can offer will go a long way to making the vision a reality. 

For more information about the Lower Ninth Ward Village please visit their website here and if you would like to make a donation, you can do that here.