Lauren Laboissonniere

This year’s trip to Louisiana was not at all what I expected it to be. Last year we worked with a group of Habitat for Humanity volunteers at 6 different locations in Slidell; the groups did framework, tiled kitchen/bathroom floors, painted entire houses, and gardened. This year, we arrived at the village where we would be spending the next week working and helping Mack make the village safer for future groups.

For our first work day in the village, the group split up to complete two major tasks: cleaning out the soon-to-be game room and weeding/organizing the back yard. At the end of the day we looked upon all the work we had done and didn’t feel too excited. There was a huge rubbish pile in the middle of the main room and two large donation piles in the back yard. 

We couldn’t see the work we had done yet, so it was a bit discouraging. Sensing everyone’s frustration Danielle and Mallory decided to have a meeting with everyone to brainstorm what needed to be done. We were able to come up with a list of tasks we would like to accomplish while still in Louisiana and we also made a list for future groups to work on. The next day we started working on that list and we were finally able to see everything we had done.

I was in charge of painting the game room, but we realized that we needed to putty the gaps after we had already begun painting. Kara lead the puttying with Ashton and Kyle, all of whom were awesome at the job. We got a first coat of paint on all of the walls (three blue and one accent green-in our awesome Habitat colors) and the putty job was done by lunch. We’ve allowed everything to dry so that first thing in the morning we can sand the putty so it’s flush with the walls and we can complete the painting job.

Although this trip did not start out as I had expected, I have been having a great time working and experiencing Louisiana with everyone here. I couldn’t have asked to work with a better group of people and I am so excited to see how all of our work turns out. By tomorrow evening we should be done and it will be great to see everything we have accomplished. Hopefully next year’s group can continue our work and Mack will be able to have a safe location for youth to come hang out. 

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.

Cheryl Travison

The trip to the New Orleans was not what I expected; however, I think we help the community there more then we could ever imagine.  I did not know how bad of shape the village was coming down here, but when I got here I saw the potential it had. When we took the bus tour of the Lower Ninth Ward I saw how bad the area had been hit, and could not imagine what the people here went through which made me want to help them as much as we could. I think when the Village and the ranch we went to are up and running the community here will benefit greatly. The kids will have somewhere to go, something I realize I took for granted while growing up.

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.

Kevin Griffin

My trip to New Orleans has truly been an unforgettable one.  Even six years after Hurricane Katrina, the Lower Ninth Ward is still barely rebuilt.  The people of this area are struggling to become resettled in their community, and the Lower Ninth Ward Village is doing a huge part in helping to rebuild.  Hopefully with the help of other colleges and volunteers, the Village can become a safe haven for young citizens to gather in and stay away from crime.  Working on the Village has really made me realize how much help this community needs to be rebuilt.   Other than cleaning up the Lower Ninth Ward, this trip has had many other fun excursions.  Our trip into the city left me with many great memories.  Probably my favorite part of the city was Yo Mama’s Burgers.  This restaurant served some of the best burgers I ever tasted, and I am hoping to return to get another one before we return to Massachusetts! 

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.

Kara Larson

The aspect of the Lower 9^th Ward which inspired me to be a proactive contributor to the restoration of The Village was the correlation between lack of education and crime within this area of New Orleans. Right now the Lower 9^th Ward has one of the highest crime rates in the United States due to not only the lack of funding for community support and repair, but more importantly, the lack of appropriate education for the young in the area. As a proponent of education, the fact that the children in this area currently only have access to one school, where previous to Hurricane Katrina they had seven, is devastating to discover. Worse, this one school covers barely two blocks of space and houses grades K-12. Moreover, due to student overflow and the competitiveness of getting into nearby public schools, many kids are forced to board school buses at five in the morning and return home at six at night in order to get a semblance of an education. This tight schedule is harsh on the younger generation as they are unable to attend after school tutoring sessions and participate in after school activities such as sports due to their strict and lengthy commuting schedules. As a result their grades plummet, the children feel as though they cannot succeed in their academic endeavors and look for other methods of survival… crime.

The Village founder, Mack, is attempting to combat this serious problem through providing the Lower 9^th Ward children with a safe haven. A place where kids can be supported intellectually as well as physically through giving kids the sports and educational opportunities they deserve. Hopefully with a continuous flow of funding and volunteers, Mack can encourage the younger generation to aim high and allow The Village to continue to be 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.

Jacob Czarnowski

Since coming to New Orleans, I have learned a lot about the situation the citizens were forced into when Hurricane Katrina hit through talking with Mack (the leader of the community center). He also gave us a tour of the Lower Ninth Ward. This is the community where he lives and was one of the hardest hit areas during Katrina. Some areas of the Ward had over 33 feet of water. We all had a chance to see what happened to this community and how much the area was being rebuilt.

By creating this community center, Mack hopes to bring people back to their homes since a lot of people were still living where they got relocated when Katrina hit. I think it’s a great idea and he seems to have a lot of great programs in mind for the center. For instance, he is working on a fitness program for kids in the community so they can get exercise. He is also working on a car donation program which will raise money for the center. Right now he is still relying on donations to keep the center open, so revenue generating programs are important to create a self sustaining center.

I have really enjoyed helping to make the community center better. We have been working to organize the building and clean out all the old junk that is here. It is in rough condition right now, but with enough help, it will be a great place for kids to come and have a place to go after school. I am glad that I have had the opportunity to be a part of what Mack is trying to do to rebuild the Lower Ninth Ward.

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.

Andrew Canniff

The trip to New Orleans has been an eye opening experience for me to say the least. It has been interesting to be fully immersed in a culture of which I was completely unfamiliar with. Being from the city of Boston, I thought I would be able to relate on some levels to the urban society of New Orleans and more specifically, the Lower Ninth Ward. This assumption could not have been more incorrect. The City of New Orleans and the community of the Lower Ninth Ward might as well be in a different continent from the northeast. This statement is not meant to be derogatory in the least bit because both regions possess unique aspects.

Hurricane Katrina devastated the Lower Ninth Ward in August of 2005. More six years later, the damage to the area remains catastrophic. While taking our bus tour through the community, one could easily mistake the area for a war ravaged city. Contrary to popular belief the war here is still being fought. Waged against poverty and lack of resources, the people of the Lower Ninth Ward battle daily to preserve a community steeped in tradition and pride. Evacuating the Lower Ninth Ward during Hurricane Katrina and deciding to never return would have been cowardly. The citizens of the Ninth Ward are far from cowards, they are tough, working class people who have decided to sacrifice their standard of living to salvage a culture which easily could have been washed away by the turbid waters of Hurricane Katrina. The Lower Ninth Ward could easily have been the modern lost city of Atlantis.

My fondest memory of the trip thus far occurred nearly two and a half hours from New Orleans on a ranch which is sponsored by our fearless leader who simply goes by moniker Mack. Travelling by bus over a lake which had water stretching from horizon to horizon, we finally reached Mr. Johnson's farm. Richard Johnson greeted us upon our arrival and asked if anyone in the group knew how to drive a tractor. I instantly jumped up and followed him to what looked like an ancient piece of farming apparatus. To be completely honest, the closest I’d ever come to driving a tractor was sitting on one at a County Fair. What transpired next was a trial by fire. Unable to comprehend any of Mr. Johnson’s deep southern lexicon, I hopped onto the tractor and cranked the key. I quickly learned that the control mechanisms of a farm tractor are the direct antithesis of the average motor vehicle. The brake pedals are on the right, the shifter is awkwardly in between the driver’s legs, the clutch pedal is on the left, and most surprisingly the gas pedal is actually a lever positioned next to the steering wheel.  Before I knew what was happening the tractor lurched forward and Mr. Johnson cackled as I nearly jumped out of my seat.

However I quickly got the hang of wrangling the massive piece of equipment and Mr. Johnson directed me towards a series of fence posts which were connected by rusted barb wire. He ordered me to wrap a thick chain around each post and yank it from the ground. I red lined the tractor engine and it began to sound like it was about to explode. The posts were stubborn, causing the front wheels of the tractor to lift off of the ground. Finally with a crack the posts were unearthed.

Although my encounter with the tractor occurred 120 miles from the Lower Ninth Ward, I felt that my work on the ranch yesterday touched the lives of many because in the near future young teenagers will be traveling to Mr. Johnson's farm to escape the crime and poverty of the Lower Ninth Ward.

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.

Katye Milligan

This was the first day of the official trip. A small group came to New Orleans a few days early to set up for the rest of the group, which allowed us to get it ready for a large group of people. We were able to purchase the food needed for the entire group and rearrange some of the rooms so that everyone would fit better.

           

We ended up filling up six carts of groceries so that we would have enough food for the week.

The food for the week

We were glad to come a few days early because we got to spend more time with Mack and got a chance to meet Slick, who is basically the handy man of the village.

Scott, Danielle and CK getting the food for the trip

This morning we all went on a tour given by Mack McClendon, the founder of the Lower Ninth Ward Village (community center). He has been the main leader in bringing together the Lower Ninth Ward.

Mack McClendon giving a tour

He emphasized that so many of the people who had to leave their homes because of Hurricane Katrina have not returned to the Lower Ninth Ward. Many of them were elderly and on fixed incomes, so they wouldn’t be able to renovate their house and make it livable again. This really affected me because I thought about my Grandmother. If she was forced to leave where she raised her family and be unable to return even six years later then that would put a lot of stress on her and our entire family. When this happens to an entire community at the same time this makes it even more difficult to handle, because there is no support system in place.

He started a program titled ‘Where’s Your Neighbor?’ This is basically a program where volunteers go around asking people who have returned to the village about where their neighbor is. He found that this was a more effective way of locating people then looking in directories, because people generally knew where the people around them had gone.

Mack explaining 'Where's your neighbor?'

One of the things on the tour that made this disaster more tangible was some of the houses he showed. Many of them were clearly unlivable. An example of one of these houses is shown below. At this point on the tour this house would have been under more than 25 feet of water. After the levees broke these homeowner had 12 minutes to break a hole in their roof to escape. The hole means that these people probably got out of their house, while the uninhabited houses without holes in the roof most likely had homeowners who drowned trying to escape. 

A deserted house in the Lower Ninth Ward

On the next stop of the tour, Mack showed us the three types of levee construction: metal, concrete, and dirt. He also showed us where a barge had broken through the levee during the flooding from Hurricane Katrina, which led to flooding of the Lower Ninth Ward with water reaching over most of the houses.

WPI Habitat for Humanity listening to the tour

One of the next stops on the tour was to look at the Make It Right houses. This is an organization that was created by Brad Pitt to rebuild a neighborhood in the Lower Ninth Ward so that they are ‘safe, sustainable, and affordable.’ They require that the family who owns the land were residents of the Lower Ninth Ward before Hurricane Katrina and that they are buyer ready. This is a good thing, because it means that the original residents of the Lower Ninth Ward will be returning to the land that their family had owned for decades.

However, many of these people that would be returning are either low income or they are elderly on a fixed budget. Before Hurricane Katrina most of these families owned their houses so they did not have to pay a mortgage or rent. Also, most of the houses before Katrina were worth less than $75,000 so they did not pay property taxes. The Make it Right Foundation requires the original homeowners to contribute to the purchase building materials and paying for the maintenance of the house as well as taxes and insurance. All of these costs make it very difficult for the original homeowner to be able to afford rebuilding their house. It seems like it would be more effective to build houses that are less extravagant and more affordable, so that more of the original homeowners can return and stay.

One of the houses that stood out to me was a new design that actually has a hydraulic system so that if there is flooding the house will rise with the water and then return to the original level when the water is gone. This is a great idea for a house that lies in flood zones.

Make it Right Foundation house with hydraulics

Mack has a new idea of how to recover after a disaster. He believes that if their was a system of sponsorships then more of the money would go directly to the homeowners, rather than getting caught up in administration costs. This could be accomplished by having a website with a list of families and what they need to be able to return. Then, when making a donation, it could be more specific. For example, I could donate fifty dollars to the Johnson family for sheetrock for their walls. This would earmark funds and make it more specific as well as connecting the donator with an actual person.

Now that we have seen some of the destruction and some of the rebuilding efforts, we were off to see how the children were being educated. Still six years later, there is only one school in the Lower Ninth Ward when there used to be seven. This school was reopened as a charter school and students all through New Orleans apply to go here through a lottery system. This school isn’t large enough to cover all of the Lower Ninth Ward so many of these children have to be bussed out to go to school elsewhere. This seems like a broken system, because there are children who are being bussed in, while others are being bussed out. With this added difficulty of getting to school more and more children are dropping out.

School in Lower Ninth Ward

After we saw the Lower Ninth Ward school, which was brought back to life from members of the community, we travelled to a neighboring parish to see what it was like there. According to Mack, this area was actually more affected by the flooding, with higher water levels. But when we went there it looked like it had completely recovered from the hurricane. There were businesses such as Walmart and Home Depot as well as a variety of other small businesses. The thing that was most interesting about this nearby area was the school. It was not only completely restored, but it was on the level of most colleges in terms of facilities. They had multiple turf athletic facilities as well as a walkway over the main road connecting buildings. Mack commented that he wished the Lower Ninth Ward could have that type of facility, because it could get the kids off the street and bring the crime rate down.

School in St. Bernard's Parish

The final part of the tour we came back to the Lower Ninth Ward and we looked at some of the houses. There is a lot of culture in this area that has become diminished without the people there to support it. One of the examples of this culture was what Mack called the ‘cake houses.’ These are houses that a seaman built so that his wife could see when he returned from sea, because they were high enough to see from their porch. They were also built to prepare for flooding, because if there was a rise in water level then the family could go from the first level to the top level until the waters receded. 

House in Lower Ninth Ward

The last place we looked at was at Mack’s house. After Katrina, it was months before he was able to return to his house just to see what the damage was like. He still has not moved back into his house yet. This shows his dedication to bringing a community center to the Lower Ninth Ward. He has prioritized this center over his own house. Without his dedication and effort there is no way that the village would have been started, much less in the process of being able to offer many resources to the local community. He is the heart and soul of this project and he has given up so much to help lead it.

Mack McClendon's house

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.