My experience so far in New Orleans:

What did you learn this week about the situation here in New Orleans that you didn’t expect or hadn’t thought about or were surprised by?

All my life, I have been told that the government is here to make our lives better. They create policies that protect our communities, provide us with basic education and are there to help when we need it. I found out that all of those are false. The organization that we have been raised to trust is not trustworthy at all. Jim, one of the co-founders of PNOLA said that the government did not help rebuild NO at all. It was the people in the community and volunteers that have contributed to NO’s restoration.

What have you learned this week about service? What kind of volunteers do the groups we’ve worked with need?  How is good service distinguished from just ‘volunteering’?

I learned that service is a good and not so good thing. It’s good to help people, but it’s not good to do all the work for them. Community service should be more about setting up the building blocks. The only way to provide service to the entire community is to teach them how to make their lives better. Nontheless, extra hands are always needed in rebuilding 🙂 Communities really need long time volunteers. This goes along with what I was saying about the Peace Corps. Volunteers stay in their community for two years to develop a connection with the community and to teach them how they can improve. They can taket or leave it, but seed planting is the important concept. Therefore, volunteering is a temporary job, but service provides a community with solutions (not just a band-aid).

Day (9) Update

Monday. We were back into motion! Monday was a nice day because we were able to see how much our work was appreciated. Jimmy is a disabled man who has a hard time keeping up with his house. Some of us helped inside the house and some of us worked on the yard. There were about 8 people working on the yeard and it took us about 3 hours to complete it. At the end of the day it was rewarding because we didn’t use any electric tools (ie. lawn mower or weed wacker). Instead, we just used our positive attitudes and a bit of hard work. At the end of the day, it felt extremley accomplishing. Also, it was nice working out in the fresh air!

Day (10)-Today

I have been waiting for this day the whooooole trip! We finally worked on restoring the wetlands or as Mel the coordinator would say “Saving the world!”. This was definitley a treat for me. If you don’t know, I am a plant ecologist and my thesis is on forest restoration. For my thesis, my professor (Hi Jeff!) and I planted 1,500 oak seeds over the span of two days. Today we plated 1,000 seedlings that had probably grown about 2 feet high. The bigger the plant, the more time consuming to plant. Nontheless, it was nice to work with something that I love. AT the end of the day, I realized that we have it pretty good in New York. Whenever a wetland is destroyed in NY (by a company), the company has to pay to rebuild a wetland. But, declicate, endangered wetlands are (usually) State Preserves. That way, they are protected by the state and there are strict regulations in destroying it. So far, we have not seen one State Preserve in Louisiana. Therefore, anything is free game for destruction. Maybe if Louisiana’s oil companies stopped messing with nature, restoration projects could be successful. But, I get the feeling that the state may be too interested in money to restrict oil companies. Since healthy wetlands protect against storm surges, hurricanes did not do a terrible amount of damage in the past. Due to the rapid depletion of the wetlands, hurricanes have a much greater effect on the communities within Southern Louisiana. In the end, money is what is destroying the wetlands and increasing storm surges. What a shame.