A group of students and chaperones recently traveled to New Orleans as part of Notre Dame High School’s Justice Immersion Program. The months of preparation, reading personal accounts of Hurricane Katrina, watching documentaries and reviewing maps of the damage, although helpful and informative, still do not adequately portray the devastation still facing the region. Below Anna Giubileo ‘18 shares her reflection on the experience.
For me, the New Orleans Immersion trip was a chance to help a community of people whose lives have been completely changed for coming on 12 years now. When people ask me what my favorite moment of the trip was, without hesitation I say meeting the homeowners we were helping. Yes, touring the French quarter was fun, as was spending time with friends from school I normally wouldn’t see over break, but the main reason I wanted to go on the trip was to help rebuild from the disaster that happened so long ago.
Hearing about how Miss Brenda—who wasn’t able to move back to New Orleans until 2007 and didn’t see her house until 2009—dealt with contractor fraud, and how Mr. Sterling and a group of people helped to hand-pump oxygen for hospice care patients when the power went out at the beginning of the storm were so humbling. Driving around the city, you can see neighborhoods of Brad Pitt houses or newly rebuilt homes next to abandoned, graffiti covered shells.
What the particular jobs of the day were, be it building a shed frame or clearing away blight from a property, didn’t matter; every day people were just excited to be working. We found joy in the help we were giving, as well as things like playing football during a break or spending time with the homeowner’s dog. By the end of the trip, we were sunburned, tired and looking forward to showering without having to wear flip flops but I know for myself that I was proud of everything our group had accomplished during that trip and felt more connected to a community I otherwise would have had no interaction with.
Yes, it costs a fair amount of money and, yes, you do miss out on spending Easter with your family, but this is a trip that can honestly change the way you look at the world and the response to natural disasters from a volunteer and governmental standpoint. It is completely and utterly worth it.
