Today, the Mardi Vols successfully completed our first day of service in New Orleans. Our first stop was New Orleans City Park. One of the oldest city parks in the nation, New Orleans City Park was thoroughly damaged by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. In the aftermath of the storm, city volunteers have spent the last ten years trying to salvage the forest land throughout the park. This project required pulling weeds, clearing dead trees, and planting new ones to take their place. In order to help with this effort, Mardi Vols joined forces with students from Ohio State University to spread mulch and and pull weeds from the area around the newly-planted trees. This project allowed us to help NOLA rebuild the natural habitat, and it showed how the city parks are still struggling with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina ten years later.
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| New Orleans City Park |
For the second half of the day we went to the St. Katherine Drexel Prep. School. It is an all-girls catholic school which serves girls from New Orleans. We helped clean some parts of the school and also helped move old computers out of the school. We were fortunate enough to do this work through Kedila Family Resource Center, which is a nonprofit based in New Orleans which provides after school and summer programs for the children of New Orleans. It was founded by Dipo Mosadomi, an ex-college professor who created Kedila in response to a great need he recognized in the community post-Katrina.
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| Working with students at the school |
Overall, we have enjoyed finding out different ways in which we can positively impact the New Orleans community. It has been interesting to talk to different leaders at our service sites to gain a deeper understanding of the issues that NOLA faces today. We have learned that there are many more areas of need in this community than meets the eye, and the contrasting acts of service at both sites showed the group that there is more than one way to renew a neighbor and the surrounding communities.
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