With the one-year anniversary of Katrina having come and gone, it is easy to find commemorative photo galleries and speeches urging us to remember the disaster. If you go to the Red Cross web site, you’ll find a report titled “A Year of Healing,” but the thing you won’t find without some real digging is how you can actually help.
More than a year after the storm, nearly half of the population of New Orleans is still living in Houston, Texas. Neighborhoods are standing half-built and half-destroyed as volunteers gut houses and leave them, just to keep the land from being repossessed for private development.
There is a sense that Katrina is quickly becoming a historical disaster rather than an ongoing humanitarian effort, which we remain morally obligated to support. Despite the lack of publicity, students can still help Katrina’s victims through donations and volunteer work.
Money can be donated easily. Since nobody under the age of 30 carries a checkbook anymore, The National Association of Katrina Evacuees (www.nakejustice.org) accepts donations online through Paypal.
Habitat for Humanity and Coinstar have organized a campaign called”Making Change for Katrina.” Students can gather up their spare change and donate it to Habitat for Humanity via the Coinstar machine in the Chevy Chase Bank in Leavey Center.
Groups on the ground like Emergency Communities (www.emergencycommunities.org) and Common Ground Relief (www.commongroundrelief.org) are desperately in need of all sorts of supplies, from water, ice and canned tomato sauce to provide for the still homeless, to administrative items like printer cartridges. These desperately needed items can be shipped to either group via UPS or FedEx.
CGR, Habitat and EC all organize volunteers to rebuild homes over summer vacation and school breaks, but in the short term students can volunteer without leaving DC. New Orleans Housing Emergency Action Team (www.no-heat.org) is an organization trying to prevent mass eviction of residents who may not even be aware that their destroyed homes are being repossessed. Their website is full of telephone numbers that need to be called and letters that need to be sent to New Orleans City Council members and FEMA representatives. The Katrina Information Network (www.katrinaaction.org) has a whole list of things students can do to help. The Red Cross even needs administrative volunteers here at their D.C. offices.
The truly important thing is not how students help, but that they do. The Georgetown Hurricane Emergency Relief Effort has not updated its web site since November of last year; there are no examples of the on-going projects that should be happening. Many universities are part of CGR’s Student Solidarity Network, which tries to raise awareness and inform homeowners away from New Orleans when their home is up for eviction. Georgetown is not currently part of the network, and founding a chapter would be a good way to jumpstart enthusiasm on campus.
Readings, exams and the next season of The Office may be occupying our minds now, but many homes on the Gulf Coast are still rotting in the sun. Without a consistent volunteer base, the rubble in New Orleans could become ruins instead of houses.
