Home again: Ecumenical rebuilding effort helps 12 New Orleans families
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
By: Matt Hackworth/CWS

Lionel Corley spent his first week displaced by Hurricane Katrina not in a shelter or a hotel but along the blazing-hot concrete ribbon of Interstate 10. "The police had closed down the Interstate and there was no moving in or out," Corley recalls. "We just slept in my truck."

Related hi-res photos available at www.churchworldservice.org/hires

Homeowner Gloria Mouton is congratulated by CWS Executive Director John McCullough, in a May 13 celebration of the Little Wood neighborhood rebuilding effort, spearheaded by CWS in New Orleans this spring.  Photo: Matt Hackworth/CWS

NEW ORLEANS -- Lionel Corley spent his first week displaced by Hurricane Katrina not in a shelter or a hotel but along the blazing-hot concrete ribbon of Interstate 10.

“The police had closed down the Interstate and there was no moving in or out,” Corley recalls. “We just slept in my truck.”

Corley is one of a dozen Little Woods homeowners who are about to return home thanks to Church World Service’s Neighborhood: New Orleans home rebuilding project.

Paint is hardly dry from the final, finishing touches on the four-week rebuilding effort but it has already garnered an award from the National Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster.

The first-of-its-kind ecumenical effort is one of two projects to receive the 2009 National VOAD Innovative Program of the Year Award this week in Salt Lake City.

Neighborhood: New Orleans brought together volunteers from 10 CWS partner agencies to focus on rebuilding homes in a single part of a city very much still in recovery from Hurricane Katrina.

“I think what’s so unique about this project is that 10 faith-based agencies are working on a single effort, working as one,” said Bonnie Vollmering, CWS associate director for domestic emergency response.

More than 500 people from 27 U.S. states and Canada came to New Orleans as volunteers with one of the project partners: American Baptist Churches USA; Brethren Disaster Ministries; Christian Church (Disciples of Christ); Christian Reformed World Relief Committee; Lutheran Disaster Response; Mennonite Disaster Service; Presbyterian Disaster Assistance; Reformed Church in America; United Church of Christ; and the United Methodist Committee on Relief.

Florence Coppola, Executive for National Disaster Ministries with the United Church of Christ, conceived of the idea and worked with CWS to help make it happen.  CWS brought the agencies together to work with the Crescent Alliance Recovery Effort, the long-term recovery agency in Orleans Parish. A long-time CWS partner in its own right, CARE helped CWS and the partners select Little Woods as the focus neighborhood, and the homeowners who would be included in the project.

“We visited a number of areas but once we saw Little Woods, it was unanimous,” Vollmering said. “We knew we had work to do there.”

A neighborhood of mixed incomes and races, Little Woods began as a fishing camp along the shores of Lake Pontchartrain. Hurricane Katrina forced water into the neighborhood, where it sat, as high as the roofline, for days.

The water eventually drained, and families have recovered intermittently ever since. Some homeowners in Little Woods are waiting on assistance to come through Louisiana’s labyrinthine Road Home program. Others are in dispute with insurers or federal agencies. More than a few find themselves like Gloria Mouton, who was defrauded out of most of her recovery funds by unscrupulous contractors.

On May 13, Mouton, a grandmother and community volunteer, was led into her nearly-rebuilt home by a New Orleans brass band and a parade of dignitaries and volunteers celebrating the project.

"It’s a beautiful thing to know that these people in the world will give from their busy schedules to help someone like me," Mouton said. "It just sends a warm feeling in my body every time I walk into this house and see the progress they made."

How to help

Contributions to support Church World Service emergency response and recovery efforts may be made online, by phone (800.297.1516), or sent to Church World Service, P.O. Box 968, Elkhart, IN 46515.

Media Contact:
Lesley Crosson, 212-870-2676, lcrosson@churchworldservice.org
Jan Dragin, 781-925-1526, jdragin@gis.net

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