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APRIL 5,2006 FEATURE THE REFLECTOR PAGE 8
HURRICANE RELIEF EFFORT
UIndy student spends Spring Break rebuilding in New Orleans
Shelly Grimes
Opinion Editor
hile many students’ ideas of
W Spring Break include MTVesque
parties
on beautiful
beaches, I-
University of
Indianapolis
sophomore
Laura Steed
spent her
Spring Break
doing something
a little
different.
Steed, a
youth ministry
major, took the
university’s
motto of “Education
for Service”
to heart
and decided
to spend her
break helping
New Orleans
residents
clean up from
Hurricane
Katrina and its
Steed applied for and received a
Greyhound Adventures Travel Grant,
a grant that gives money to students
interested in traveling for vocational
and service initiatives.
Steed and about 80 other AIM
volunteers, which included a group of
college students from Canada, worked
a fourth home’s drywall, which had
been put up by other AIM volunteers.
“We took everything out of the
first house we worked on. It looked
like stuff had been picked up and just
thrown into different rooms of the
house,” Steed said.
Steed said that one of the most
surprising things she
risen. The lines on the
wall showed where
water had settled, and
these lines were “at
doorknob level.” She
said that this indi-
cated that the water
had originally been
much higher, but had
receded to this level
and stayed there for
long periods of time.
Although Steed
characterized the work
as “exhausting,” she
also found it very
rewarding because she
got to meet all of the
homeowners, family
members and contrac-
tors of the homes she
worked on.
“We found out that
an 86-year-old woman
aftermath. Photo courtesy Laura Steed owned one of the
“I just homes we were work-
wanted to do This Dicture of a house on top of a car is just One of the many ing on,” Steed said.
something scenes of devastation Steed witnessed in New Orleans. ‘‘We met the daughter
positive over
break,” Steed
said.
Steed’s journey to New Orleans
began with a simple Internet search.
She found a ministry called Adventures
in Missions (AIM) that was doing relief
work in the area and decided that she
wanted to help out.
AFFRILACHIAN POETS
on several different projects throughout
the week.
Because Steed went by herself, she
was able to float between different
groups of volunteers and go where she
was needed most. Steed helped gut
three different houses. She also painted
of the woman and
asked what had happened.
The 86-year-old woman hadn’t
wanted to leave because she and her
husband had built the home and lived
in it all their lives. Her grandson had to
make her leave [before the hurricane].”
Steed said that it also was rewarding
to hear others say that the group was
making a difference.
“When we were working on one of
the houses, another woman came up to
us and asked us to help her finish gut-
ting her home,” Steed said. “We helped
her, and afterwards she said, ‘Oh my
goodness. It would have taken five
days to do what your group did in two
hours.’ Hearing that we helped made it
worthwhile.”
Steed stayed with other AIM work-
ers in an 1860s style duplex in the
city’s Garden District. She and other
members of the group worked in a
part of the city known as Holly C J ro ve ,
located in the city’s Eighth Ward. She
also had the opportunity to visit the
city’s Ninth Ward, one of the city‘s
hardest-hit districts.
“Almost everything in Holly Grove
seemed to be salvageable,” Steed said.
“From what I understand, the Eighth
Ward had damage from the hurricane
itself. In the Ninth Ward. cverything
seemed to be demolished.
We were told that the damage
in the Ninth Ward was caused
by the levees breaking, not just
the hurricane.”
Steed said that traveling
through the Ninth Ward and
seeing the destruction firsthand
was a very emotional experience.
“When we were in the Ninth
Ward driving through it, we
saw a woman just standing in
the middle of the road bawling,”
Steed said. “[Being in the
Ninth Ward] was like doing
a short-term mission trip to a
Third World country. It made
me want to stay and help out
more. We were onlv there for a
she did face one challenge: the airline
lost her luggage.
“I couldn’t even go and buy clothes
because everything in the city is still
pretty much closed,” Steed said. “Even
the places that have opened hack up
don’t have the employees to stay open
all day.”
Steed said that AIM offered her an
internship to work with youth volunteers
this summer. She said that she
hopes to do more to help the New
Orleans relief effort.
“Here, and in the rest of the world,
we seem to have moved on. But Hurri-
cane tiatrina is still 85 to 90 percent of
the news in New Orleans. These people
are still rebuilding, and they are seeing
how slow the process of rebuilding is,
if it is even possible,” Steed said. “I’ve
seen [the devastation] on the news, but
I can’t express in words the emotion of
seeing it in person.”
week, but it will take years to Laura Steed wears protective
rebuild everything.”
While Steed said the experi- gear while gutting a house with
ence was overall a positive one, extensive hurricane damage.
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