"Voluntourists" Helping New Orleans Rise

Love and mourn New Orleans? Always wanted to visit but never been there (like me)? Here's your chance:

NEW ORLEANS -- Wearing safety goggles and dust mask, Anita McClendon shouldered a rotten floorboard to the curbside debris pile and then, dirty and dusty, paused to smile. This, she said, "is awesome." [ . . . ]

McClendon, a health care worker from Oakland, Calif., was here for three weeks, ripping down demolished buildings by day -- and dancing to zydeco by night. She and thousands of other volunteers are combining work and play to help rebuild this devastated city.

This month, they are being joined by hundreds of college students spending spring break here and on Mississippi's Gulf Coast. They include 200 students from Howard University, more than 40 from George Washington University and more than two dozen from American University's Washington College of Law. The effort is dubbed "voluntourism," and local leaders say it is critical to the rebuilding because it provides dollar-spending fun lovers and hammer-wielding fixer-uppers all rolled into one.

Damn! What a great idea.

Here's the organization that's coordinating it, Mardi Gras Service Corps.

The Mardi Gras Service Corps is focusing on the most devastated neighborhoods of the city, including the Lower Ninth Ward, Gentilly and Central City. (Director Felix] Wai said the group is trying to provide housing, schools, day-care centers and jobs. "Without those four fundamentals," he said, "people won't come back." [ . . .]

Mardi Gras Service Corps volunteers are expected to work four to six hours a day. They are relieved of duty in time to hit the town to eat dinner at an oyster house or hear jazz at a nightclub. The group even helps people find temporary lodging, which is rare in the city these days.

"We are housing a lot of people in churches and community centers," Wai said

Here's where you sign up, by sending Wai an e-mail.

Here's a whole website about the concept of VolunTourism with information about conferences, projects and opportunities.

Habitat For Humanity volunteers all over the world, including in NO, "enjoy cultural activities at night," but nowhere in the world does that mean quite what it means in New Orleans. Given the ancient, festive soul of that city, it seems as important to party her back to life by night as to remove rotten boards and scrub mold by day.

It sounds like a great vacation. I wish I could go.

Comments

[reader_iam]

Sunday before last, I was involved in an interesting conversation with a college freshman, back home for the weekend, about how a number of his classmates were slated to spend their Spring Breaks in N.O. in just the manner you describe. Boy, was that cool!

(He was not going with them, but is joining/helping to spearhead a group of our youth (and other congregation members) who will be headed down to Missippi for an extended stay of volunteering early this summer.)

I think this is marvelous. A number of the people whom we're sending talk in terms that I find strongly reminiscent of early Peace Corps/ Vista volunteers, either in written material or from what I remember in talks given from my late childhood/early teenhood.

The freshman to whom I refer alluded to the same thing among his classmates who were heading N.O. for their Spring Break week.

I know that this is a drop in the bucket of what's needed, but this really does one's heart good, doesn't it? And inspires one to encourage and enable similar efforts going forward?

I'm not in a position to go myself, but it is truly with a glad heart that I participate in the "enabling" efforts behind scenes.

I'll bet, Amba, that anyone could "contribute" to the organizations that you've highlighted.

If you can't go, enable the going, I say!

[amba]

Good idea! Yes, they do quite modestly request donations, too.

Not only does it do my heart good to see the kids going to NO for spring break, it does my heart good to see them NOT going to Fort Lauderdale for wet T-shirts and alcohol poisoning. This is a heartening "fashion" indeed. It suggests that there's a mood of eagerness out there for (not very painful) sacrifice, or at least service, even if the president isn't asking for it.

[Melinda]

If I were twenty years younger and single, I would be so there!

Years ago, I used to volunteer with some grad students from Penn to do restoration work on an old hotel in Cape May, NJ. We got free room and terrific meals for the weekend. Of course, the nightlife was nothing like NO, but it was fun meeting people and feeling like you were getting something accomplished.

As far as the (current) president not asking for service, hopefully somebody who would like to be president will take notice of the eagerness for stuff like this.

[tjl]

Even if you are not able to do demo work, you can also help N.O. simply by going there and spending money in hotels, shops, and restaurants. I spent a few days in N.O. just before New Years and found it to be the most rewarding travel I'd ever done. The locals I met were eager to share their Katrina stories in a very personal way -- it was like being a guest rather than a tourist. And the disaster has not diminished those classic N.O. attributes of charm, hospitality, and joie de vivre.
The French Quarter, the Garden District, and other historic areas are intact and mostly open for business, so a visit to N.O. now would offer pretty much the same attractions as always. However, the devastated areas are all around you, and as a visitor you will always have the sense of being present at a uniquely tragic historic moment.
I've been to N.O. many times, but this is the trip I will always remember.

[meade]

Hey cool! My college freshman daughter and a group from U. of Cincinnati head down this Sunday for a week. "Voluntourism" -- first I've heard that. I like it.

[meade]

Voluntourists