"It was a spiritual experience. I put myself in the shoes of the ladies who had lost their house(s). I went outside and just stared at the house(s). To lose everything then to come back to the same area, where two new houses are going up. That is miraculous. And it touched my heart, and I know the joy they felt. (Brother K., Bethel Colony South, Community Construction Team Member)"
REBUILDING COMMUNITY BLOCK BY BLOCK was supported by a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Community Outreach Partnership Center (COPC) Community Futures Demonstration grant awarded to Louisiana State University’s Office of Community Design and Development, and was conceived to demonstrate a method for rebuilding economically stable and sustainable neighborhoods through teaching unskilled residents the art and science of homebuilding. It was a bottom-up approach to neighborhood redevelopment that acknowledged the importance of social capital, the value of community engagement, and relied on academic theories of experiential learning and continual assessment and feedback to shape the project. In its final incarnation, the project site was the classroom, and the partnership a learning community very different from those typically occurring at the university. The community construction team was comprised of displaced in-place New Orleans residents (their homes and/or family were gone but they remained in New Orleans); young people from Covenant House New Orleans, a safe-haven for at-risk homeless youth, ages 16-21, men from Bethel Colony South, a faith-based substance abuse recovery program, who had remained in New Orleans during the storm organizing and facilitating rescue services for residents trapped in their homes, and West Bank Vietnamese residents that lost their fishing/shrimp boats and homes to the hurricane who had re-located to New Orleans, and were employed by Acorn Services Inc. (ASI), gutting and cleaning damaged properties. In total, there were 30 community construction team members: 12 young men and women from Covenant House, 10 employees from ASI, and 8 Brothers from Bethel Colony South. In addition to the community construction team, thirteen fourth year architecture students, traveled 70 miles from Baton Rouge to the project site every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, to work side-by-side with the community construction team, earning 6 credit hours for the semester.
