Camp Hope and the St. Bernard Project

http://www.stbernardproject.org

Visit this web site for all of the information on the St. Bernard Project. This is what we are a part of the for the next two months.

I'm here in St. Bernard's Parish, which is 15 miles outside of New Orleans. We're finishing up week 1.

The scoop on where the Badgers are staying: We're staying here at Camp Hope for the next two months. It is the largest volunteer base camp in the country, with up to 3000 people staying here at a time, and it is run by Habitat for Humanity. Before I go, just to clarify, we are NOT working for Habitat for Humanity. We are working for a specific project known as the St. Bernard Project, a project started in 2006 in response to Katrina. The goal of the project is to build and sell homes to homeowners of the area who have had their homes destroyed at no interest.

To give you an idea of the scope of damage we're responding to:

- 27000 homes were affected. All in all, that is 100% of the homes in St. Bernard that were damaged.
- 68,000 residents lived here before the storms.
- The current population is about 25,000 and growing.

The goal of the project is to keep this number growing and bring more and more home each week. Our job as Corps members will be to serve as site supervisors, starters, warehouse workers, and, of course, working on the construction. I've gotten my position which I'll tell more about later. This week was filled with training. Next week we really get going.

...Heading to Austin, Texas this weekend and leaving midday today, and we're off to our worksite in two minutes, so I'll have to update this more later. I apologize for the lack of details, but I'll make up for it.