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 On February seventeenth, i arrived in the upper ninth ward with my good friend Elise and a pickup truck loaded full of medical supplies. We had driven two days from Chicago and planned on staying for only ten days, long enough to get a sense of the scene in New Orleans and along the gulf coast after Hurricane Katrina. Our goal was to bring back first-hand news to Chicago. I was an alternative school teacher and Elise worked in her local library, so we already had a broad audience to whom we could bring back our stories. We thought ourselves mentally and physically prepared, despite warnings from others about the dangers of criminals, murderers, and mold. What we were not prepared for was the emotions that would suck us in and hold us captive.Our first night was spent at HOPE in Violet, and many, many months later i am still there, living and working in an organization assists a community of folks who decided to return home and rebuild. HOPE comes with no assumptions and no agenda. Since January, we have provided community members and volunteers with food, clothing, books, cleaning supplies, medical supplies, health and safety equipment, and tools.
The core coordinating group of HOPE has ranged from one person to twenty at a time, and we have housed hundreds of volunteers from across the world. As people, we participate in potlucks, deliver food and supplies to neighbors, distribute recycled bicycles to kids and adults, read books with young children, clean flooded houses, and shingle damaged roofs. We are grassroots because we are small and personal, and we avoid any influences other than the community itself. Just recently, our focus has shifted from direct hurricane relief to community empowerment and collaboration. We still gut houses, and our construction project has re-shingled countless roofs and hung hundreds of sheets of drywall. But the needs of the community have directed us to address the need for child care, after school programs, and projects for young adults. New Orleans alone lost more than 75% of it’s child care facilities and 60% of it’s schools due to Hurricane Katrina (ReliefWeb). We currently assist a Violet resident with daily daycare and after school programs located in her home. We hope to lead this program into a larger facility and provide a new opportunity for former daycare facilitators who have been displaced and unemployed in their field since the storm. We are also working with local residents who hope to re-open a boys & girls club in the neighborhood we live. Finally, it is our goal to start hands-on vocational training with young adults, pairing them with experienced residents and local tradespersons who are willing to pass on life skills and knowledge. HOPE is a Louisiana non-profit organization surviving off of private donations from individuals and groups around the country. Most of our donors have come to know us through volunteering with us in Violet, seeing first hand the problems of a man-made disaster and the grassroots relief efforts that are struggling to rebuild side-by-side with the residents. We receive no foundation grants and feel it is important to have our direction come from the neighbors we work with. We have been a consistent relief effort since January 2006, and based on our work with this community, we have forged a bond of trust, compassion, and friendship. It is my hope that we continue to grow in this way and provide needed resources for the community of Violet. nicola - HOPE coordinator november 2006
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