Today we volunteered for a nonprofit organization called Green Light. This organization helps build gardens for members of the New Orleans community and aids in providing healthy accessible food options. In our volunteering we built a garden for a women who just recently moved to New Orleans with her husband. I feel that we have truly made an impact on this family’s life because this garden will lead this family to a healthier lifestyle while also being a reasonably affordable option. After building the garden, we started out on our next Green Light project. This project was to help change residents light bulbs into more energy efficient ones that would be better for the environment and a more affordable option in the long run. Doing this made us realize that the littlest things can help create a better and safer environment. By knowing that we took part in not only helping others but helping the environment, we feel that today has been a successful day and we cannot wait to see what we are doing tomorrow.
We began our volunteering at the St. Bernard Project with an ice breaker. We went around in a circle saying our name and the city we live in, then we recounted a childhood memory. After everyone had gone Chris, one our volunteer coordinators, told us the purpose of the ice breaker. Everyone of our memories was related to our neighborhood or a home. By building the house that we were working on today, we were helping a little boy or girl like us make memories. We helped families come together and have a normal life in a good home. Although we just painted the home and helped clean, I really felt like I was changing people’s lives. Even though the painting we did was just a small part of the home in the future, each minute we helped paint was a minute closer to a family moving in.
The towering highways wind and turn above the Lower Ninth Ward, casting long, serpent-like shadows above the decayed and broken homes. It’s hard to believe that the Hurricane Katrina was ten years ago, but for the inhabitants of the Lower Ninth, it still feels like yesterday. But Greenlight strives to make the inhabitants feel like it’s tomorrow. From installing high-tech CFL (Compact Fluorescent Lights) fixtures, to creating aesthetic and simple gardens, all free of charge.
Today, we helped Green Light perform both of these services. But the most powerful experience for me was truly seeng how different everything was in the Lower Ninth. The main city of New Orleans is comparable to Manhattan, Miami, Chicago, and ever other major city in the United States. But in the Lower Ninth, all that changed. The streets haven’t been serviced in years, and are scarred and mistreated. It seems that every other house is abandoned and destroyed, still marked with an eerie paint, counting the number of corpses found within the home after Katrina. The paint has been around for 10 years, and was drawn by the first responders. The houses that have been rebuilt are much more cheery, and are fairly new, painted with bright colors of orange, green, and pink, which clash heavily with the grey and black of the thick metal girders covering the windows and doors. Even after giving people a few minutes heads up that we would be coming, they would still cautiously open the door, and ask who we were before unbolting and unchaining the entrance to their home. Even the way they talk is different. We all had trouble understanding what some were saying, as they spoke their twisted and changed, yet unique, version of the English language.
In the end we built one garden for a grandmother and her grandchildren, and replaced nearly all the lightbulbs in two homes. While it seems fairly minuscule, this simple work will save each family hundreds of dollars in the years to come. Hundreds that they can use to better their lives, their homes, and their neighborhoods. And as the neighborhoods get better, more people will move in, and more decayed houses will be torn down and rebuilt, and the Lower Ninth will become the strong and unique community it was all those years ago.
Today my group took part in Green Light New Orleans, which is a nonprofit organization that takes out lightbulbs in resident homes and replace them with Mercury free bulbs in order to decrease the amount carbon dioxide that is released into the atmosphere. Along with the lightbulbs, GRNO puts in small gardens into backyards to takes New Orleans residents the importance of building self-sustaining gardens. This is my second time doing AWB in NOLA and this is probably my favorite service project because it really allows us to interact with the home owners; speaking with them about their life, about their encounter with Hurricane Katrina, etc. It was really amazing to talk to Mrs. Margaret about how she ended up in New Orleans because she fell in love. She said “when you fall in love with a man from New Orleans, you are with them for the rest of your life”. It is moments like these where you really get to connect with the people you are helping out. Also, I was so happy to see Mrs. Margaret help us with the finishing touches of the garden construction because it shows how interested she actually is in invested time to maintain her garden. Overall, I am having an amazing time on AWB NOLA for the second time and am thoroughly enjoying the service projects as well as the pulsing culture that NOLA has to offer.
~ Matthew Kaplan is from Atlanta, Georgia and attend the University of Georgia
Camp is an single experience made up of multiple amazing experiences. Those of us who are now too old to go to junior camps or Tel Yehudah often forget just how much we are missing. Today was Saturday, which is debatably the best day out of the camp week. It is a day filled with fun shabbat services, learning about the week’s parsha by watching the parsha players perform, extra chofesh(free time), havdallah services, and of course rikud(dancing). This is the day that made not only me, but multiple other people, miss camp more than we had any other day this week.
Once we started singing the old songs and dancing the same dances that i had done back at Camp Young Judea, I immediately picked up right where i had left off in middle school. It felt like i had never left in the first place and I had this overwhelming feeling of community accompanied by pure joy. I was overcome with love for my both my religion and the people that were surrounding me. It felt like home.
Camp Young Judea Texas is not just someplace I went for a few summers when I was a kid and then will forget as I grow older. Camp is a place where i made memories that i will have with me forever and a place where i made friendships that will last a lifetime. Camp is and will always be my home and I wouldn’t want it any other way.
When I arrived to the PATH Homeless Shelter, I expected each resident to have a similar background. I assumed the residents wouldn’t have completed school, and from there on would have fallen on a dangerous road. However, after many conversations, I felt very guilty for my presumptions. I first met a man named Steve who spent most of his life traveling around the United States and Europe studying art and history. He was very knowledgable about current events, and has dreams to someday return to Europe as filmmaker. Later in the day, I met an older woman who grew up in Los Angeles with her two kids. Both of her kids attended private school, and are currently very successful. The fashionable woman has two doctor’s degrees as well, education is extremely important to her. She spoke in a wise manner-reflecting her enthusiasm for psychology and literature. After a near death attack, she arrived to the shelter due to her extreme PTSD.
Talking to those two residents allowed me to realize that life is a roller coaster-it has very high highs and very low lows. One day you can carelessly be traveling around the world, but the next you can be without money and no one to rely on. Luckily, shelters exist to provide a temporary sanctuary until you get back on your feet. Next, I realized that I shouldn’t generalize anything before I’ve actually become aware of the situation. I will start observing and learning about a situation before creating a bias standard. Lastly, I felt very inspired by Steve and the other woman-despite how rough life has been for them for the last years, they continue to be very optimistic. In conclusion, PATH provides a temporary home for all sorts of people with all sorts of backgrounds. I am very glad that I volunteered at PATH and had so many interesting conversations with the residents.
