Deanna Cavallaro

This is my first habitat for Humanity trip down to New Orleans, and it is a little bit different than I expected. I pictured my trip to be mostly constructing a house for a family, however we ended up helping Mack. When we first got here the warehouse had junk all over it so on the first day we cleaned up some of the really cluttered parts. We spent hours carrying chairs and tables from the inside to the backyard. We looked at the empty room and Mack always says that this village is supposed to be for kids. We asked Mack what he wanted to do with the empty room and he decided it was going to be a game room. We got bright Habitat colors and dry-walled and painted the room. From the chairs we found before, we took six sturdy ones and painted them to match the room. It was really cool to start and almost finish this room because seeing the entire transformation was incredible. That was probably my favorite part of all of the work days.

Other than the workdays at the village, we had gone into the French Quarter and spent all day walking up and down the streets. It was amazing because culture here is so different; everyone is so kind. We met a waiter named Raffle and he told us some awesome stories about living in New Orleans. We had also gone to a ranch of Mack’s friend; the highlight of my day there was finding and saving four puppies.

The village has already come a long way in the three days that we worked here and I can tell there is a lot of hope for the future. Once the village is complete it will be so useful for the community and all of the children and I can’t wait to see the progress in years to come.

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.