Home • About • Calendar • People • Forum • Archive

Dec. 15, 2005 • Volume 14 Number 8

Season of Service

BC volunteers prepare to head to Gulf Coast over Christmas break

Three groups of volunteers from the Boston College community will spend time during the semester break working in areas of the Gulf Coast still recovering from hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

The more than 100 faculty, administrators, students and staff are scheduled to travel next month to sites in Mississippi and spend upwards of a week helping residents continue to rebuild after this fall's catastrophic weather disasters.

In doing so, these BC volunteers will join numerous alumni and other representatives of the University community who in the past few months have contributed their time, energy, sweat and talents - even their sense of humor - to support relief efforts in Louisiana, Mississippi and elsewhere in the Gulf Coast.

Other BC service trips this semester break will include sites in Belize, Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and, for the first time, Uganda.

The ranks of BC-affiliated Gulf Coast helpers past and future include a recent grad who put her career plans on hold to lend aid, a 2000 alumnus and Big Easy native using his writing skills to help displaced New Orleanians re-establish their sense of neighborhood, and 13 members of the Presidential Scholars Program, which brings some of the nation's top high school students to BC.

First to travel down south during the break will be a group of faculty and staff members led by Volunteer and Service Learning Center Director Dan Ponsetto, which is scheduled to work in Biloxi, Miss., from Jan. 4-9.

As of last weekend, Ponsetto said he hoped to have around 10 participants go on the trip. Faculty and staff members interested in signing up can contact him at ext.2-1317.

From Jan. 6-13, the 13 Presidential Scholars, along with the program's associate director, Jennie Thomas, will also be in Biloxi. Their trip, as is the one organized by Ponsetto, will be coordinated with Hands On America, the US-based affiliate of Hands On Worldwide, a non-profit, volunteer organization that provides disaster response and relief.

"Each year, the program does some kind of service project, and this fall Katrina was fresh in the students' minds," says Thomas. "Initially, we thought about raising money for relief efforts, but it became clear that something more was needed, so we decided to expand the project into a service trip."

Thomas credits Former Presidential Scholar William Driscoll '05, a Hands On America volunteer who has filmed documentaries for the organization, with helping facilitate the visit.

To fund the trip, the program raised some $3,300 through a variety of activities, including a benefit concert in Gasson Hall titled "Building a Bridge over Troubled Waters" at which several Presidential Scholars performed.

Rounding out the Gulf Coast trips will be a visit by 80 students, faculty, and staff members from Jan. 7-15 to Pascagoula, Miss., where they will help repair nine homes at the cost of at least $1,500 per home. The group's visit has been organized by Campus Ministry and several other offices and departments.

In addition to a campus fundraising event and contributions from the participants, the Pascagoula trip is being supported by a raffle, which will be drawn today, by the Office of Marketing and Communications. Donations are still welcome. For information on the project, see http://omc.bc.edu/bc-katrinacleanup/.

The assistance these BC volunteers provide will build on the work done by others in the University community. Among them is Derrick Evans '90, MAT'94, who shortly after Katrina struck went to his hometown of Turkey Creek, Miss., delivering supplies. He wound up staying there through the fall, gathering a group of other volunteers including Seye Akinbulumo '07 and graduate student Jose Lopez '05.

Elizabeth Lavin '05 was hired by the American Red Cross to work with victims of Hurricane Katrina in the New Orleans area. Lavin, a Potomac, Md., native who earned a degree in sociology, had been working for the US Department of Housing and Urban Development in Washington, DC when she was selected for the Red Cross staff position.

According to her parents, Frank and Joanne Lavin, both members of Boston College's class of 1973, Beth was chosen for the position in part because of her undergraduate volunteer work with physically and emotionally handicapped children.

After serving with the Red Cross relief effort, Lavin plans to attend law school, specializing in international women's rights issues, her parents said.

Connell School of Nursing grad Kim Waugh '95 - who earlier this year was in Indonesia aiding survivors of the tsunami - traveled to the Gulf Coast region as a volunteer for Project HOPE (Health Opportunities for People Everywhere). A health education and humanitarian assistance organization founded in 1958, Project HOPE conducts medical training and health education programs in 33 countries across five continents. In the Gulf Coast, Project HOPE worked with its domestic partners to deliver critical medicines and medical supplies to Gulf Coast hospitals and will continue to address long-term health needs in the region.

One of the more unconventional examples of outreach is a Web site launched by New Orleans native Charles Veprek '00 and fellow Louisiana expatriates living in New York City.

The site, www.nycnolahelp.org, features "The Creole Tomato," a collection of satirical news stories by Veprek and his collaborators about post-Katrina New Orleans. One entry is a society column-style item by a local couple announcing "the evacuation of their daughter Maurice Robicheaux with Mr. Henry Washington." Another article uncovers one more instance of the lack of preparation for Katrina: "Not one of the city's voodoo priests nor even the famed Jackson Square fortune tellers saw the devastating storm coming."

Another section of the site is "The New York Times-Picayune" - the title plays on the New Orleans newspaper Times-Picayune - which includes off-the-beaten-path news tidbits, reminiscences and features about New Orleans life. Contributors, among them Veprek's classmate Matthew Welch, have written about benefit events and other relief efforts, interviewed local merchants and other residents about their Katrina experiences and plans for the future, and described summers spent working at a boatyard.

Other features include a forum, a photo gallery of New Orleans landmarks and sights and a directory for current or former city residents to submit or view contact information.

Veprek - whose mother still lives in New Orleans but did not endure significant property damage - says the site started out as a relatively small-scale enterprise, a way to deal with feelings of helplessness. "I'd been through 9-11 - my office isn't far from Ground Zero - and seeing what happened to New Orleans was very similar. I felt like I wanted to give something back to this city which has meant so much to me, and is so now sad and desolate."

After sharing the site's Web address with some friends and acquaintances, Veprek was surprised to see interest multiply, to the extent where it wound up being featured in a couple of newspaper stories.

For all the site's irreverence, Veprek says he only recalls one significant instance of criticism from a reader: a Baton Rouge native who objected to the satirical depiction of his city's cuisine.

"Everyone knows it's all good fun and that there's no malice involved. The point is to at least make people laugh, because there's not too much about New Orleans nowadays that is humorous. We just want to give residents of New Orleans a way to re-establish their sense of neighborhood, to connect with one another and talk about where they're from, what they've been through, what they want to do."

-Public Affairs staff •