One thing that never gets old here is meeting volunteer groups from all over the country. Some people just feel the itch to help. Some are horrified that these kinds of conditions exist in our own country. Some have family or friends here. Some have connected with a friend of a friend from the area, or just know someone down here who was able to clue them in on a good volunteer opportunity. That was the case with a Church group I met on Thursday. There are 32 of them, 10 adults and 22 kids, from St. Paul Catholic Church in Tell City, Indiana, spending the week in St. Bernard Parish. A couple of the people who organized the trip know someone in the Parish, so they recruited those willing to come, raised some money to fund the trip (each of the kids only had to pay $50) and drove down in mini-vans. The Parish Government is putting them up in Trailers while they’re here, at no charge.
Together, the group is doing everything from helping out at a museum to working at a community center. Thursday, they were fixing up the food stand at one of the local baseball fields, putting a new roof on it. They were also cleaning up the playground area and power-washing the walls in part of the gym. They were extremely happy to be doing things that affected many people, as the clean-up of a park would, as opposed to just working on one house – not that that’s not a very valuable form of help either. I just never, ever get tired of meeting people like this and hearing of the shock and horror they feel about the conditions here, but also the enthusiasm and energy they have to help clean it up.
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