Post-Katrina New Orleans

AmeriCares construction expert Fletcher Watton recently spent a week in New Orleans setting up a camp for volunteers building homes for Hurricane Katrina survivors. 

Staff Photo

The volunteer camp AmeriCares helped build is a series of temporary structures like the one pictured above. CrossRoads will use them to warehouse building materials and for a dining hall and meeting room for volunteers.

Three years after Hurricane Katrina, volunteers from across America are an integral part of the recovery effort, providing labor and bringing hope to those who are still coming to terms with their losses.

I saw the impact these volunteers are making first-hand when I was in New Orleans recently working with CrossRoads Missions, a volunteer organization rebuilding homes destroyed by Katrina.

AmeriCares is supporting the rebuilding effort by providing durable, temporary structures for the volunteers’ base camp. AmeriCares and Sprung Instant Structures have donated three of the manufacturer’s dome-shaped facilities that will serve as a warehouse for building materials, as well as a dining hall and meeting room for the volunteers who come to rebuild communities.

Meeting people who have bought homes built by CrossRoads volunteers and hearing their stories only reaffirms the importance of our post-Katrina work. The homes CrossRoads builds are nothing short of amazing, and are in great demand. You go through neighborhoods and half of the houses are still abandoned three years later. I get emotional when I see the difference this project is making in people’s lives every day.

Meeting the volunteers who make it all possible is just as touching and inspiring. Their commitment impresses me time and time again.

Volunteers fly there every week at their own expense, but what they get in return is the satisfaction that someone else will have a nicer place to live.

CrossRoads is a faith-based group making a long-term commitment to rebuilding homes in New Orleans. I am proud to be part of an organization that supports their work. It’s just one of the many projects AmeriCares supports in Louisiana and Mississippi to help the people of the Gulf Coast recover from Katrina. Support AmeriCares relief efforts in the U.S.