April 27, 2009

Twelve homes in the historic Little Woods area of New Orleans are being rebuilt in coming weeks thanks to 500 volunteers from ten Christian denominations around the U.S., including dozens of volunteers from the Christian Reformed World Relief Committee, at http://www.crwrc.org/drs/.

"Most of the disaster organizations that are still present along the Gulf Coast are faith-based," says CRWRC Disaster Response Services (DRS) area manager, Arnie Gustafson, who is helping to oversee construction on four homes this week. "In Little Woods, CRWRC volunteers are working alongside volunteers from the Baptist, Mennonite, and other denominations. We're working here not just as organizations, but as Christians together."

CRWRC has four other active construction sites in the U.S., including two on the Gulf. Gustafson says that CRWRC volunteers on the Little Woods site are borrowed from other reconstruction work in Kenner and Slidell, Louisiana, where activity is temporarily slowing down for the summer.

Bonnie Vollmering from Church World Service, the lead agency for the ecumenical effort, says that while many Christian denominations and faith groups have helped Gulf Coast survivors in the last four years, this project "is the first national-level collaboration of denominational groups to rebuild together after Hurricane Katrina."

The project, called "Neighborhood: New Orleans," is currently targeting qualified home owners in Little Woods who have been squatting in temporary trailers since Hurricane Katrina flooded the small, working class community in 2005. The multi-denominational effort will have its one-neighborhood-at-a-time focus on Little Woods through May 16, 2009.

Neighborhood: New Orleans volunteers are working through Church World Service to partner with a local interfaith organization, the Crescent Alliance Recovery Effort, in Little Woods. The groups anticipate that the initial project will be a spark that brings the long-time lake community together and ignites other groups to continue to help with the Little Woods recovery.

"Our combined goal is to work together in mixed teams to repair the homes of those who can't afford to rebuild or who haven't been helped by the system," says CRWRC-DRS director Bill Adams. "Most often, our volunteers come away from their experience saying they have been just as blessed by giving their time and energy as those they're helping."

CRWRC-DRS responds to disasters in North America where survivors are elderly, disabled, without insurance, or otherwise do not benefit from government or private assistance. As an agency of the Christian Reformed denomination, CRWRC-DRS sends rapid response teams, provides door-to-door needs assessments, cleans up and mucks out homes and businesses, and provides quality rebuilding services to disaster survivors who need it the most.

Along with CRWRC-DRS, the national denomination groups coordinating Little Woods volunteer teams include: American Baptist Churches USA, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ, Church of the Brethren Disaster Ministries, Lutheran Disaster Response, Mennonite Disaster Service, the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Reformed Church in America Global Mission, the United Church of Christ, and United Methodist Committee on Relief.

Church World Service, with offices in Elkhart, Indiana, and New York, established a website for the ecumenical project at http://www.neighborhoodneworleans.net/. Some materials for the Little Woods rebuild were donated by Habitat for Humanity.

Christian Reformed Church in North America