Volunteers Give Hope To Gulf

NEW ORLEANS—Two by two, they carried the heavy planks across the parking lot in the harsh Southern sun, the backs of their arms and necks burning. The hours passed slowly.

The labor might have been more efficiently given to hired professionals, several volunteers pointed out. It costs about $300 to pay for the airfare and food costs of each volunteer, and the value of the labor each student contributes—about 30 hours, in many cases—is likely less than that, according to Gayatri S. Datar ’07, a coordinator of undergraduate relief efforts.

In the end, though, the aid is more symbolic than practical, bringing hope to disillusioned New Orleanians.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, some corpses rotted inside homes for several weeks, and residents felt abandoned by the rest of the nation. Here in the Ninth Ward, the Fire Department found a pair of bodies just 10 days ago—seven months after the storm.

But the influx of college students this spring offered them a reason to hope.

“What we’ve heard over and over is that people are depressed,” said Gene A. Corbin, executive director of Phillips Brooks House Association (PBHA), a Harvard undergraduate public service organization. “It means a lot to them to know that they’re not forgotten.”

SPRING CLEANING

Through organizations like PBHA and the Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations, smaller groups of students volunteered in the Gulf region through the fall and winter.

Spring break brought a dramatic increase in undergraduate relief efforts. Last week more than 60 Harvard undergraduate volunteers flew into New Orleans, and other students worked in Mississippi.

The dramatic increase in the number of Harvard volunteers reflected a broader trend, as students from colleges across the country opted to spend spring break doing service in the Gulf. Tent cities of volunteers have popped up in parts of the Crescent City. Harvard students arrived at the tail end of the March boom.

AmeriCorps volunteer Lisa F. Sagok, 22, said, “It’s really amazing because it’s six, seven months after the storm, and I think there are more volunteers than ever.”

No exact numbers exist, partly because of the decentralized and temporary nature of the volunteer work. But there are at least 5,000 volunteers from colleges and churches across the country, according to the city’s newspaper, The Times-Picayune.

And last week, Harvard students joined the crowd.

‘THEY ARE GOING TO COME’

At Benjamin Franklin Elementary School, one of the few left under the jurisdiction of the long-ailing Orleans Parish School Board, undergraduates worked on a mosaic, placing cracked tiles onto walls. Some fourth and fifth graders lent a hand.

“It’s great to see especially black males from Harvard,” said Ron E. Midkiff, 55, who has taught the school’s gifted program for 15 years.

“I mean, this prestigious university. It’s just a very good model they don’t have.”

He was one of the residents who felt abandoned after the storm. Eastern New Orleans received water up to the roofs of some homes in low-lying central parts.

When the water became too high, Midkiff found a skiff to ferry his wife and son to an empty school gym nearby. Armed with guns and an axe, they waited four days. “I said to myself, ‘they are going to come, they are going to come.’”

“They” is a mysterious amalgamation used by New Orleanians that includes the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the National Guard, the New Orleans Police Department, and a slew of other unnamed entities.

“They” didn’t come. But seven months later, 60 Harvard undergraduates tried to show that they would—and did—help.

Some 20 graduate students tried to do the same by offering pro bono consulting services to residents of Broadmoor, a central neighborhood in New Orleans. The students, mostly first-years at the Kennedy School of Government, worked with residents to create a plan for repopulation and revitalization.

The students’ presence “gave everybody hope,” said Lisa K. Dozier, 56, sitting in the trailer where the students were tracing maps and typing on laptops.

“It’s a shot in the arm for us,” she said of the students’ arrival.

“People were becoming so discontented with the city... People are smiling now.”

BAND TOGETHER

On Friday night, 20 undergraduates from a Habitat for Humanity trip danced cha-cha on the dark floor of a club called Cafe Brasil. Some sipped out of plastic cups, listening to a man singing on stage. The act was Fredy Omar con su Banda, an eight-member crew with one main vocalist—Fredy Omar himself.

The students met Omar because they are helping to lay the foundation for his house in the Musicians’ Village, a community of 80 houses being built in the Upper Ninth Ward.

New Orleans Area Habitat for Humanity plans to construct 80 homes and a community center for displaced musicians on the site.

Since the storm, Omar has been staying in the largely unaffected French Quarter. The new village, he says, “is going to be an opportunity to start again fresh.”

At the construction site, contractors are pouring concrete into the foundations started by students.

Some volunteers said they thought the contractors could have done the whole job themselves, though they were glad to play a role in reviving New Orleans.

“It could have been done a lot more efficiently. Just more contractors,” said Ndidi N. Menkiti ’06, a volunteer in PBHA’s Mather House group and a Crimson editor.

THE SAINTS GO MARCHING IN

“’Scuse me,” said Brenda M. Smith, 50, as she stopped Colleston A. Morgan Jr. ’07 outside her house.

For the first time in six months, Smith had returned to her damaged home Friday. The Harvard volunteers were carrying mold-covered couches out of the house and dismantled doors with crow bars. Morgan’s team was gutting the house down to its skeleton. And then the real reconstruction can begin.

Morgan was wearing a Harvard t-shirt, and the white cotton had quickly acquired a coat of dust. He’d been cleaning Smith’s home for more than an hour with six other Harvard students when Smith asked, “What’s the name of y’all’s group?”

Before Morgan could respond, she proposed: “God’s Little Angels?”

—Staff writer April H.N. Yee can be reached at aprilyee@fas.harvard.edu.