Janelle Boucher

My name is Janelle Boucher and this is my first year as a member of Habitat for humanity. I was told we would be spending our annual trip in the Lower Ninth Ward located in New Orleans. One of the most devastated parts of Louisiana from Hurricane Katrina.

When we arrived and went on a tour of the area with our host, Mack, I was shocked at the status of the lower ninth despite it being almost seven years since the hurricane. I didn’t know what to expect when I first came down but what Mack showed us was beyond anything I could have envisioned.

Mack made a point to show us the status of the schools in the area; there’s a total of one. The school isn’t miniscule but it is probably smaller than my high school which held 2000 students from 9th to 12th grade. This one school is expected to hold and educate students from K—12 . This is ridiculous. If this isn’t bad enough, the seniors at this school are educated in small white trailers. It gets worse. The graduation rate in Louisiana is about 63 percent. From that number only about 60 percent have an adult literacy level.

Mack then told us about his daughter who used to live in New Orleans but evacuated and later had children in another area. He once asked her to return one day so he could see his grandchildren. She said she wouldn’t, her kids had a chance where they were; they were on the honor role.

He must have been crushed when she told him this but he understood. How could he ask her to come back when New Orleans has the highest crime rate and a murder rate that has doubled since Katrina. He believes these statistics are because the youth in New Orleans are under educated. I agree with him considering the average 16-year-old sent to a juvenile facility in Louisiana has a 5th grade reading level.

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 Woods

This is my second time coming to Louisiana. Last year I went with the Habitat group that went to Slidell, where we helped build houses for people in the community. It was a great experience – helping others that were always so friendly and eating all the local food, which was amazing, so I decided to come back this year.

We stayed in The Village this time, which is a community center in the Lower Ninth Ward that is still being put together to one day become a place where children can come to play. We spent days working there, making it safe, cleaning up, and putting up a roof. We also spent a day at a ranch that, like The Village, was in the progress of establishing a fun and safe environment for children in the area. While there, we got to ride horses and drive tractors and have fun – we played hard but we worked harder. Children would come and go during the day to ride the horses in the rodeo and hang out around the ranch. It was great to see this alternative offered to them.

The Lower Ninth Ward has one of the highest crime rates in the country and creating these new centers will hopefully open a new environment in the community that will take kids off the street and out of the penitentiary system.

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.

Rachel Mollard

It’s day 6 here in New Orleans, or what I now like to call NOLA. Although it’s been a lot of work so far, time has flown by. Looking back on everything that’s happened on this trip, it’s hard to believe what we’ve accomplished here.

To be honest the trip has been much different than I had originally anticipated, but it’s been so worthwhile. I came here thinking we would be going around the Lower 9th Ward, helping people in the community fix up their homes for damages rendered, if you can believe it, six years ago. Instead, we have been working tirelessly to fix up the Village, a community center in the Lower 9th Ward intended to be a place for the community to gather and children to have a safe place to play and learn. Early in the trip, we took a tour of the Lower 9th, as Mack, essentially the father of the Village, told us about his community. He told us about hurricane Katrina and what happened to his home. The water rose about 8- 32 feet that day on land, and most people were forced into their attics, either breaking a hole in their roofs and waited on there to be rescued or died drowning in their own attics before help could come. He explained what the “Xs” on the home meant, the date of the investigation, the name of the organization who examined the home, and the number of people and animals found deceased in the home. It was shocking to think there were still homes with these “Xs” on them, and still so many empty lots were home once stood. It was then that the impact of the hurricane truly sunk in.

While fixing up the community center was not what I had in mind in when I came to New Orleans, I couldn’t have imagined doing anything else. The impact the Village will have on the community when it’s finished is greater than any of us will ever know. The ultimate goal is to fix the place up enough and make it safe enough to earn liability insurance so children can play and learn here safely. This week has been a combination of cleaning, sorting, painting and building in the Village.

One of the projects I have been really involved in over the past days is a map painting of the United States. The idea behind the map is the number of volunteers that come through the community center to stay and work in the Lower 9th Ward from all over the country. The plan is that once the map has been painted on the wall, each group that comes to the Village will be able to mark where they came from, showing how we can all come from different places in the country, but regardless we can still come together for a united cause. First we traced a map we found in the library and drew over the map with a grid. Being the engineers and artists we are, we devised a way to blow up the grid on the wall so we could map out, well, our map! As I’m writing this blog the map is still in progress. But in one day we have drawn and painted most of a 15ft by 10ft map and a large blank white wall. We scaled the huge wall taping out our grid, carefully calculating out every move, as engineers do. We then carefully drew out the map in pencil while other people in the group followed after filling the states in with brightly colored paint. Even if we don’t finish today, like the village itself, it is a work in progress to be finished by other volunteers in the future.

Overall, this trip has been eye opening, saddening, challenging, and tiring, but most importantly one of the best times of my life. I have not only learned so much about New Orleans, it’s culture and the impact of hurricane Katrina, but I’ve learned a lot about myself. I may be one person, but I can make an impact. I’ve gone outside my comfort zone, pushed myself physically and I’ve come out on the other side a better person for it

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.

Chiana Montesi

This trip has been very eye opening to me. I have always had more than enough provided for me my entire life, and when I realized how much I took it for granted. The lower ninth ward has so much to offer to its community, but without the funds or support it seems as if the community has no positive influences. Walking around the village and lower ninth I saw how happy the people were even though they were still rebuilding from practically nothing.

The part of the trip that really moved me was seeing the holes in the houses. For those who don’t know when the hurricane hit people inside their homes had 12 minutes to go up to their attics and cut a hole in the roof. Those who couldn’t successfully cut the holes most likely died. It’s a breathtaking site to see, and really shows how you should never take time for granted. After I took in the scenery, I wondered why the buildings were even still up. Why after 6 years do these people need to see the remains of what tore their city and lives to pieces. But then I realized that it was a reminder to volunteers like myself, that these people still need help. They have come so far, but still need help. Even though these people are incredibly strong and amazing they cannot do it alone.

Another site that was eye opening to me was the x’s. The x’s show four things; the date that people came and checked the house, the group that came in, the number of animals that died, and the number of people that died. Luckily no one died in this house, but the place was still a mess.

Coming back to the community center I had a new motivation. I wanted to make it more suitable for kids and the community. Along with others I decided that we should paint a mural on the wall of a map of the united states. We decided that on top of the mural we were going to have the logo Building Dreams for New Orleans. Underneath there would be a map painted with all different colors. As schools like ours came down to help renovate the community center, you mark your state and draw a line and label it with your state. Having this can be inspiration to other schools so that they could leave their mark on the community center. I also believe that this will also further inspire other children who come to the community center to get involved with community service and groups like Habitat. By inspiring this community and building this center, I hope that it will inspire them to stay involve and stay off the streets.

When we were viewing these scenes, Mack brought up pa very interesting point. He said that 6 years after the fact there are still volunteers that are coming to help. He said it’s not by the media, because in that case we would have heard about the progress when the Saints won the superbowl just 2 years ago. Instead were spreading the word about the community by mouth. So by coming here and by having this blog hopefully we can continue to spread the word and continue to build dreams down here in New Orleans.

Oh yeah! I also adopted two awesome puppies down here! One girl named Blues, and one boy named Bourbon! They’ll be making the trip back to CT with us when we leave!

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.

Caitlen Beahn

This is my second service trip to New Orleans and it definitely will not be my last.  There is something magical about this city that keeps me coming back.   What motivates me the most is the people.  The people in this community have more grit than anyone I have encountered in my life and it is truly an inspiration.  Everyone that I have had the opportunity to meet is so thankful for our work.  While we were working in the Lower 9^th Ward Village, I had the chance to talk one-on-one with Mack.  He told me that Hurricane Katrina was the greatest thing to ever happen to him because it changed his life. He was able to face the disaster and grow from it.  Mack has so much determination to get this Village up and running for the children in the community and I know that if we continue providing our work we will be able to make his dream come true.  I am thankful for being able to come to the Village with such a wonderful, hardworking WPI Habitat for Humanity team and hope that everyone had a great experience!

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.

Mallory Howard

Wow, what a week it’s been here in New Orleans! From long days of manual service work at the Lower 9^th Ward Village, to whirlwind trips to Bourbon Street, and Mr. Johnston’s Horse Farm, our group has truly had a taste of New Orleans, Louisiana culture.  I am so happy to have had this opportunity to lead this Habitat for Humanity trip.  I came down to New Orleans last year to volunteer, so I was excited to be able to come back.  Although I was the leader of the group, I did not have to step up much. Leadership is a quality that many of these students posses and demonstrated during our trip. Each day, everyone on this trip truly showed motivation, hard work, positive energy, and a lot of heart. Together we have created memories that we will never forget and friendships that will last a lifetime.

When we first walked into the Lower 9^th Ward Village, I felt overwhelmed with my surroundings. I knew there was much to get done, but the group I walked in the doors with was intelligent and creative and I knew that ideas would come together. While I was thinking of how I was stressed and overwhelmed, I tried to put myself in the position of Mack and the community around the Lower 9^th Ward. “I am too blessed to be stressed” is something Mack expressed early into our stay. Mack was and is a great inspiration. His high level of energy and positivity helped us all put all our effort into helping the community down here.

After seeing Mack smile and call us his heroes throughout the trip, I knew all of our hard work paid off. Although there was not much structure for our workdays, everyone came together to plan and make ideas happen. I am very impressed with all the work that was completed in a short amount of time. There is still much work that needs to be done at the Lower 9^th Ward Village, but we are leaving it today more organized, serviceable and colorful. Lives were truly changed throughout the trip, and I hope all the participants remember this once in a lifetime experience as fondly as I will in the 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.

Ashton Kim

I first joined the cause of Habitat for Humanity because I believed that there was nothing more important than providing people with the basic elements of life; food, clothing, and shelter. Habitat represented the third, and I have dedicated myself to its cause for the last two years.

I had attended trips to communities where I built houses from scratch. The last places I visited were remote areas of Brazil where our groups completed brick houses for people who could not afford such shelter. After mixing concrete, carrying tons of cement and bricks, shoveling rubble and sand, digging into solid ground, and setting foundations and stack up walls, our building team learnt the value of manual labor and the impact it had on less fortunate people who needed places to stay. The people we helped had the worst working conditions in the middle of the barren plains of Northeastern Brazil, and we were glad to give them a proper place to live. We were working as part of a team, where professionals supervised our process and taught us methods for bricking and mixing the concrete with our hands, and we completed multiple foundations, alongside infrastructure for the neighborhood.

Once we arrived in the Lower Ninth Ward, I immediately realized that it was going to be a different kind of assistance that we would be providing. Our group was not going to be part of a build site, but an active force that would help the community sustain itself. Although managing with donations, the community center and the community itself did not have all the resources it needed to go on. The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina had left homeowners unable to return, and stripped from their rights to their houses due to technical and legal issues. Meanwhile, there was only one school left of the seven before the disaster, and the crime rate was highest in the country. Mack, the manager of this place, repeated the importance of the community, how a hub will need to be created for the community to have a voice, and how he wished he could bring more kids and education back here, starting with safe infrastructure around the center and more volunteers and sponsorships to sustain development in the area. His concern was that a place of disaster is easily forgotten, even if it hasn’t been taken care of. After six years, that was what happened here.

We started with simple work, and I must admit that some of us were disappointed with the lack of organization here. Even I was used to and expected there to be organized shifts and tasks. All there was were piles of junk to sort out and a center to clean out and reconstruct. Still, our group managed to organize the scrap from what we could use, clear out entire areas of the center and refurnish them. Putting up walls and painting them, rearranging the library, etc. As our leaders mentioned, we had to be proactive, rather than reactive, and initiate everything we could think of to make this place more sustainable and then leave it to following groups to continue the job. We cleared out a new library, painted walls, added more aesthetic elements to the center, and got through sorting a lot of trash.

Truth be told, it wasn’t work that I was used to doing or even expected at this trip, but it gave new meaning to the work I am doing for Habitat. I was used to raising individual houses, this place, once brought back on its feet, could provide a starting point for the entire village. Our work here could be the beginning of something far greater, which could build momentum with more volunteers and help. Even now four other schools were staying here and working alongside us. I hope students could spread the word back in their own communities, and also use their own expertise that they learn from each school to help rebuild this place. Mack said that his driving force was we who were volunteering, and we should be for more people.

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.