Five Years After Katrina: A Reflection

08/29/10 is the Fifth Anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. I wrote this reflection thinking about how far I've come since I was a freshman at Loyola University New Orleans during the storm. This reflection appeared in the Perry Point weekly newsletter:

Sitting in the van traveling to New Orleans, I'm relaxing in the back seat of the Badgership enjoying the Tennessee scenery, and just notice the "A" on my right sleeve. I realize how far I've come from 5 years ago. Since the AmeriCorps NCCC logo is ubiquitous to all of us in the Corps, to the point that it doesn't seem special. But, if you look at it in a different lens, it becomes something else, something special. Whenever I talk to someone outside the Corps about the program, it’s really interesting to see their reaction to it. They are always amazed that young people can give up 10 months of their life to service. I guess it’s a credit to AmeriCorps that it instills in all of us that volunteer service is ordinary, even commonplace.

Five years ago, I had never thought of doing a term of volunteer service. I had done some community service in high school, but it was never a constant occurrence. Five years ago, I just graduated high school in California, and was intent on getting through my freshman year of college. Normally, this would have gone on without a hitch, but considering I was going to college in New Orleans in August 2005, it proved to be a much more interesting kind of year. I had come before classes started at Loyola University for freshman orientation, was starting to really enjoy the new-found freedom of college and settle into my dorm when Hurricane Katrina made my ordinary freshman year a bit less ordinary. I evacuated with my family back home to California, unsure of what was going to happen next, either to New Orleans or to Loyola. At home, as I watched the levees break and flood New Orleans, I grew a lasting attachment to the Crescent City. I found a college to attend for the fall semester, and resolved to return to Loyola and New Orleans when the next term began.

In January 2006, I came back to New Orleans with a renewed commitment to New Orleans. I met my first NCCC member while helping on a Habitat build in St. Tammany Parish, and thought it sounded pretty cool. As I reached the end of my senior year at Loyola, again met some more NCCC’ers volunteering at Jazz Fest, and I seriously started considering NCCC as a program that would help me give back to the city I had grown to love and commit myself to a lifetime of service.

NCCC is an extraordinary thing. I still pinch myself every once and awhile to see if I really am doing National Service with AmeriCorps NCCC. New Orleans, five years after Katrina, has changed for the better, although there is still much to be done. In helping New Orleans, we have all become part of the solution, and contributing bit by bit, house by house to a rebuilt New Orleans. Back in New Orleans now for the 5^th year anniversary of Katrina, in the “A” and doing my part for NOLA, I see myself as coming full circle. So much has changed in five years, and to think that I all started with a little bit of heavy weather.