HSPH Students Spend Breaks Helping to Rebuild New Orleans

Ellen Connorton, HSPH student and Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) alumna, led a group of volunteers to New Orleans during HSPH Spring Break, March 24 to March 28, to aid the ongoing hurricane/flood recovery efforts. This is the second trip for Connorton to the Big Easy in 2008.

Ellen Connorton (left) and Janice Kim in front of a house where they deglazed windows.

Connorton has been joined in her efforts by students from HSPH, HKS, and other schools, as well as professional groups and AmeriCorps volunteers. Connorton worked with an organization called Hands On New Orleans to make the arrangements for the Harvard contingency.

"In many ways, the recovery process is stalled," said Connorton, who is pursuing an ScD in the Department of Health Policy and Management. "Funds for rebuilding are limited, and many planned projects have not commenced. Volunteering can be frustrating in this environment, but that reflects what it's like to live through this process. I was very pleased to have such a positive and flexible group of students."

She said that the trips serve three purposes. They help with the recovery effort. They bear witness to what happened during the storm/flood and to what has not happened in terms of rebuilding. And, they provide an opportunity to build fellowship among students and fellow volunteers.

During the January trip, the group spent several days at elementary and high schools, helping to make the schools more inviting and conducive to learning by painting murals, assembling picnic tables and planters, and landscaping. They also spent a day painting and street cleaning in the Holy Cross neighborhood of the Lower 9th Ward, and another day painting a home in the Central City neighborhood.

Phillip Blanc painted.

In March, the volunteers returned to the elementary and high schools, where they demarcated athletic fields and erected basketball hoops. Connorton and other volunteers returned to the Central City house that she had helped paint in January and deglazed windows.

Binta Beard made signs at a local high school.

Said MPH student Phillip Blanc: "I found being able to help the various New Orleans communities, especially with the high school beautification projects, to be very rewarding - achieving in one day, the construction, priming, and painting of various outdoor plant and receptacle holders and seating benches, as well as amazing mural displays for the schools' exterior."

Other HSPH student volunteers included doctoral students Regina Joice and Binta Beard, MSc student Mikhaila Richards, and MPH students Janice Kim and Joanna Tan.

—Photos by Cheryl Gerber and Phillip Blanc.