Michael Day

So first, a quick overview of everything: I’m Mike Day, WPI Class of 2015. I heard about this trip during the first meeting of WPI Habitat for Humanity, and was immediately interested. We’re here helping in the lower 9th ward, at a place called The Village.

This is The Village

The Village is run by Mack.

So that’s the trip so far. But I’d like to take a little time here and take a step back to look at the larger picture.

We live in a world that is rocked by natural disasters on the scale of Hurricane Katrina every few years. In the 6 years since Katrina we have experienced the Indonesian Tsunami, Haitian Earthquake, and Japanese Earthquake, all of which have caused devastation on scales that defy human comprehension. As Stalin so succinctly put it, “The death of one man is a tragedy: the death of a million men is a statistic”. How can we as a people better ourselves if we forget the plight of millions after mere months?


Survivors deal with a variety of problems, even from those who try to help. Professional companies who work exclusively in providing services to disaster areas make profits off the people, technically providing aid while statistically hurting the populace by not involving them and getting them to stand back up on their own.


Millions of people donate to not profits that claim to be using the money in direct aid. What we forget is that ‘Non-Profit’ is a classification of companies the government deems worthy of corporate tax exemptions, and their motives and actions can be far from sincere. It is widely accepted that under half of the money donated to relief efforts for disasters actually ends up helping in any way at all.


So what does this leave for those who help? The truly selfless souls who donate time, money, and effort (no matter how big or small their contribution); are they all bound like King Sisyphus to an endless struggle. Must we provide aid to each disaster until the next one sends our efforts hurtling downwards to the bottom of the hill?

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.

Shaine Grogan

New Orleans is truly a remarkable place. My first trip to New Orleans last year for Habitat for Humanity I realized how unique the people are down here. Everyone no matter color or wealth seems to have a smile on their faces and love making others smile. The food and spirit in New Orleans is unlike anything I have ever seen . That is why I wanted to come back again this year and help these people out. It’s a shame that the city has so much crime, when it is one of the happiest cities I have ever been to and I feel that with a little outside help the crime can be limited

So far on this trip I have spent time cleaning the Village, which is the Lower Ninth Ward Community Center. The center has many hazards for children and needs many renovations. It could be a great place for the kids of the Lower Ninth Ward Community. Today we finished building a roof for the shed. Yesterday we went to a Ranch and it was a great experience. I rode a horse for the first time. We helped to clean up the ranch and make it more suitable for children.

Coming to New Orleans is an awesome experience! It makes you feel good to help the people that have faced a disaster. Seeing those people is what keeps you motivated. I also got to have some fun and see the city of New Orleans. I’m excited for the BCS National Championship on Monday night. I plan to root for LSU as they are New Orlean’s team. New Orleans is a great place.

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.

Kyle Bonaccorso

It is depressing to think that in August of 2005, an entire community was destroyed. The Lower Ninth Ward was under up to 32 feet of water. Everyone was forced out of their homes, and those who didn’t get out were killed as a result of the storm. This disaster was very tragic, but what is even more tragic is the way we, as a nation, handled it. We did not give the people affected the proper support network in order to help them through the adverse time. People were bussed out all across the country and many are just waiting for a chance to come back. Sadly though, the Lower Ninth Ward doesn’t look that much better than it did six years ago. There are still houses with holes in the roof where people had tunneled out of their attic to escape the water. The schools were destroyed and only one is currently functioning. The kids need a place to get an education and one school is not sufficient. Building more schools and educating the kids is important to potentially bringing down the crime rate. In order for anything to actually happen, there needs to be organization.

Having been to the Lower Ninth Ward Village two years in a row, I have witnessed the start of a vision becoming reality. Mack wants to see his village become a community center which will help bring people back to their homes. His goal is to change the way that people embrace disaster. The work that has been done over the last couple days has made a huge impact and has turned the Village into a comfortable and fun place for people of all ages. We cleared out a lot of space that was only being used for storage and turned it into a small library and game room. We also cleaned up the backyard and removed the broken windows. We have set up a framework for other volunteer organizations to pick up where we left off. It is great to know that when we leave this place, we will have made a big difference. This disaster was embraced completely wrong. But it serves as a good lesson. We can learn from this and make sure that if we ever encounter another disaster, we will embrace it correctly.

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.

Andy Nelson

Another day at The Village and we have started to incorporate our ideas and dreams into our work. There are so many things to be done that it is difficult to decide where to begin. I worked to rearrange banners from different organizations who have helped at The Village and installed some bookshelves to create a reading room. The banners show how many people have helped turn The Village into a reality and show just how far The Village extends. Yesterday, we spent the day at a ranch, which will host retreats for children from New Orleans, many of whom have never been outside of the city. Perhaps experiencing life on the ranch will have a positive impact in their lives, give them a new way to look at things, and encourage them to stay out of trouble.

Working together

Your community and ours

Building a village

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.

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.

Adam Moreschi

This year’s New Orleans service trip has been a different form of rewarding thus far. 2011’s trip was very much structured through Habitat for Humanity St. Tammany West Chapter, whereas this year we focused our efforts toward the Lower Ninth Ward Village Community Center, a safe haven for young children and adults recovering from the wreckage of Hurricane Katrina. Under the supervision of our senior ex-President, Danielle Antonellis, and Ward “Mack” McClendon, the Village Center coordinator, we are working to redesign, recreate, and renovate the Village for the future generations of college students and charities collaborating to make more initiatives down here.

Although a number of us believed that we would be building houses in the Lower Ninth Ward when we came down to New Orleans, we have been plenty busy around the Village, from painting game rooms to redesigning their kids library, putting up tool shacks to recording the next steps for when we leave. In all honesty it has been a day-by-day effort, yet in an area of extreme need for infrastructure, intel, and organizational developments, we’ve been making an impact that I am hopeful will stay grounded in the years to come. A few of our students have also been looking into finding how the Village can become self-sustainable in the future, and our idea of bike tours of the area for tourists seems to be the most promising factor thus far.

“The Village Project” has been an effort mentally and physically for our 41 members from WPI, yet with the right mindset and feasible goals we’ve had what it takes to make a true difference in the lives of those in the Lower Ninth Ward. Hopefully with this type of productivity and passion from future volunteers, the Village can be fully operational come this April for the youth and the people of New Orleans, rebuilding their community from this center of hope.

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.

Katelyn Nicosia

The little time I have spent in the Lower Ninth Ward and New Orleans in general has truly been an eye opening experience. On the bus tour we went on during the beginning of our stay, I was exposed to the poverty that these citizens have been living in since Hurricane Katrina. There were so many vacant lots where houses have been knocked down due to their desertion and their disastrous state. The houses that were left standing from the hurricane were probably in no better state than the houses that were torn down already. The one house that we stepped off of the bus to visit was devastating. There were holes in the roof where the people previously living in the house had tried to escape out of when the water was rising during the hurricane. The pipes were sticking out of the walls of the house and there were no windows still intact. There also were weeds and bushes growing onto the house. It was clear that there wasn’t a relief program still in place to clean up the houses and get the New Orleans citizens back in their homes. Seeing the many, many houses and buildings that were still in the uninhabitable state like the house described above really inspired me and got me excited to be working with WPI’s Habitat for Humanity even more than I previously was.

During the bus tour, Mack also talked with us about the schooling in the Lower Ninth Ward. He told us that prior to Katrina there seven schools throughout the city. Now,a there is one school that is Kindergarten through twelfth grade. Mack told us that he believes this is a root cause of the problems still remaining in this area. I agree that if children were getting educated like most children in America are then there would be less crime on the streets and more improvement. I think this is why Mack is working on making this community center for children because he wants to help the children have a better life down here. This made me want to really clean up the place and make it possible for children to come here. I know that we all won’t be able to complete everything we want to accomplish since we are only down here for such a short time. However, knowing that we are getting things organized and putting a system in place for the next groups who come makes me very happy with what we are doing. Choosing to come down here with Habitat was one of the best decisions I have made.

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.