Issue date: 4/7/08 Section: Campus News

Media Credit: Courtesy of Brown Multi-Faith Council Members of Brown Multi-Faith Council worked to rebuild homes and visited religious communities in the Big Easy.

College student volunteers flocked to New Orleans in droves after Hurricane Katrina wrecked the Gulf Coast in 2005. Now, several years later, students with Habitat for Humanity, Brown/RISD Hillel, the Multi-Faith Council and the Brown Christian Fellowship spent this past spring break lending a hand to ongoing reconstruction efforts.

Rebecca Russo '08 of the Multi-Faith Council organized a group including 18 students, University Chaplain Rev. Janet Cooper-Nelson and two staffers at the Office of the Chaplains and Religious Life, Faye Jaffe and Angela Howard-McParland, to work with the Phoenix of New Orleans, a volunteer-coordinating organization. They worked to rebuild houses at two sites in the Mid-City neighborhood and spent free time visiting various religious communities in the city to explore issues of faith-based service and social justice.

"The religious leaders were incredibly uplifting. They found a way to be positive amidst the tragedy," Russo said. The group visited two churches and a synagogue in addition to meeting with secular leaders, she said. "It was cool to see different perspectives on the same story."

Cooper-Nelson said she was particularly interested in seeing how the work of religious NGOs differed from that of non-religious ones. She said the group hoped to capitalize on churches' ability to "mobilize and reach out to local communities" to respond to disaster more effectively.

"The people in New Orleans were so grateful to us for caring," Cooper-Nelson said. "They are facing a serious problem. They are exhausted and have been coping with this for so long." She added that she felt New Orleans is a "magnificent city, full of resilience and warmth," noting efforts by political leaders to draw in young professionals to rebuild schools and other institutions as well as to shape the New Orleans of tomorrow.

Sumbul Siddiqui '10 said that the trip gave her a better perspective on social problems such as poverty, education and government corruption. "It was just awful that it took a disaster like Katrina to highlight these issues," she said, "and it is still an uphill battle." Siddiqui said that she was touched by the way the people of New Orleans appreciated her group's work. "Many of the people feel like they've been forgotten," she said.

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