“When the hurricane struck the Gulf and the floodwaters rose and tore through New Orleans, it did not turn the region into a Third World country… it revealed one.”
– Danny Glover
Volunteer Opportunities and Charitable Giving
Common Ground Relief is a community-initiated volunteer organization offering assistance, mutual aid and support. Visit the website to learn how to volunteer, how and what supplies to donate.
Hands on New Orleans hosts citizens from around the world, as well as provides service opportunities for citizens in the local New Orleans community. Whether you are one person or a corporate team, Hands On New Orleans provides worthwhile and effective volunteer options. We gladly engage out-of-state individuals and groups, local citizens, corporate groups, and tourists, all in service to our community.
Katrina Women’s Response Fund provides strategic support to meet the immediate needs of women of color and low-income women in the Gulf Coast region and ensure that their leadership and priorities are central in both short and long-term recovery and rebuilding efforts. By making grants to organizations throughout the region, the Katrina Women’s Response Fund invests in the crucial infrastructure that promotes the health, safety, and economic well-being of women, their families and communities.
Make it Right Foundation is built upon catalyzing redevelopment of the Lower Ninth Ward by building a neighborhood of safe and healthy homes that incorporates modern, high-quality design and construction while preserving the spirit of the community’s culture.
Oxfam America is an international relief and development organization that creates lasting solutions to poverty, hunger, and injustice. Together with individuals and local groups in more than 120 countries, Oxfam saves lives, helps people overcome poverty, and fights for social justice. We are an affiliate of Oxfam International.
The legal questions and problems facing the individuals and communities throughout the Gulf Coast region are monumental in scale, and will remain for months and years to come. In order to address this need, law students from across the country have formed the Student Hurricane Network (SHN), a national association dedicated to providing assistance to communities affected by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
Tides Foundation Relief and Reconstruction Fund quickly and efficiently channels emergency relief in the aftermath of natural and civil disasters. The Fund pools donors’ resources to increase the impact of their giving, and researches and distributes funds to effective grassroots and advocacy organizations working for long-term economic, social, and structural change.
Founded in 1985, the Women’s Funding Network (WFN) is an international organization with over 100 member funds (and 20 associate members) that are committed to improving the status of women and girls locally, nationally and globally. WFN works to strengthen and empower member funds.
Criminal and Civil Justice
Advancement Project is a democracy and justice action group. Using law, public policy and strategic communications, we act in partnership with local communities to advance universal opportunity, equity and access for those left behind in America.
The legal team of Common Ground Legal Collective provides free legal assistance to residents as they begin rebuilding their lives after Katrina and Rita, with volunteer lawyers from Louisiana Legal Aid, Loyola Law Clinic and volunteer Common Ground lawyers. They also help document police misconduct and unsafe prison conditions.
Critical Resistance is working to build an international movement to end the Prison Industrial complex, i.e. use of prisons as a solution to social, political, and economic problems driven by private interests. They support the idea that basic necessities such as food, shelter, and freedom are what really make our communities secure.
Family and Friends of Louisiana’s Incarcerated Children is a statewide membership-based organization that fights for a better life for all of Louisiana’s youth, especially those involved in or targeted by the juvenile justice system. They engage in education, community building, and leadership development advocacy through strategically chosen goals in order to empower individuals, families and communities to transform currently oppressive systems and institutions into ones that uphold justice for Louisiana’s families, to build strong, powerful families and communities and to fight for justice for all citizens.
Justice for New Orleans is a service of the Loyola Law Clinic. Their contributors are citizens of New Orleans interested in ensuring justice for all New Orleanians in this re-building period.
Lawhelp.org/LA helps low and moderate income people find free legal aid programs in their communities, and answers questions about their legal rights.
The ACLU’s National Prison Project is the only national litigation program on behalf of prisoners. Since 1972, the NPP has represented more than 100,000 men, women and children. The NPP continues to fight unconstitutional conditions and the “lock ‘em up” mentality that prevails in the legislatures. Read the NPP report exposing the abuse and abandonment by public officials of inmates at the city jail during Katrina: Abandoned and Abused: Orleans Parish Prisoners in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
Safe Streets, Strong Communities is a community-based organization that campaigns for a new criminal justice system in New Orleans, one that creates safe streets and strong communities for everyone, regardless of race or economic status.
Southern Center for Human Rights is a non-profit, public interest law firm dedicated to enforcing the civil and human rights of people in the criminal justice system in the South. The Center’s legal work includes representing prisoners in challenges to unconstitutional conditions and practices in prisons and jails; challenging systemic failures in the legal representation of poor people in the criminal courts; and representing people facing the death penalty who otherwise would have no representation.
Sustainable and Equitable Development
ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, is the nation’s largest community organization of low- and moderate-income families, working together for social justice and stronger communities. ACORN has been working for the past year to help in rebuilding and recovering in New Orleans and on the Gulf Coast. Their activities include house gutting with volunteers, organizing the ACORN Katrina Survivors Association, and organizing community forums on rebuilding..
Common Ground Relief’s mission is to provide short term relief for victims of hurricane disasters in the gulf coast region, and long term support in rebuilding the communities affected in the New Orleans area. Common Ground is a community-initiated volunteer organization offering assistance, mutual aid and support. The work gives hope to communities by working with them, providing for their immediate needs and emphasizes people working together to rebuild their lives in sustainable ways. Visit the website to learn how to volunteer, how and what supplies to donate.
The mission of Coastal Women for Change is to make a difference in our communities through securing and revitalizing our neighborhoods. They do this by ensuring that their communities have adequate information in a timely manner so that they can both influence and make informed decisions about the recovery process and community development, now and in the future.
Consciously Rebuilding is working for a sustainable New Orleans. They are currently engaged in a “Green” Transitional Housing Project that provides affordable, transitional, energy and water efficient housing to displaced residents and contributes community outreach, human capital reinvestment and civic engagement as a part of the revitalization of New Orleans.
The Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center is a private, non-profit civil rights organization established in the summer of 1995 to eradicate housing discrimination throughout the greater New Orleans area. Through education, investigation, and enforcement activities, GNOFHAC promotes fair competition throughout the housing marketplace — rental, sales, lending, and insurance. GNOFHAC is dedicated to fighting housing discrimination not only because it is illegal, but also because it is a divisive force that perpetuates poverty, segregation, ignorance, fear, and hatred.
(A Project of the Institute for Southern Studies) Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch is a project to document and investigate the rebuilding of the Southern Gulf in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Through original reporting, in-depth features, voices from community leaders, and other unique coverage, Watch aims to promote a more democratic and accountable reconstruction in the South. Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch is a project of the Institute for Southern Studies, a non-profit research and education center, and the Institute’s flagship magazine, Southern Exposure.
The mission of Institute for Women & Ethnic Studies is to improve the physical, mental, and spiritual health and quality of life for women of color and their families in New Orleans.
Lower Ninth Ward Center for Sustainable Engagement and Development’s (CSED) goal is re-creation and repopulation of a strong community mindful of its history, resources and vulnerabilities as active, engaged, resilient, prosperous, energy independent and beautiful as possible. The CSED is a project of the Holy Cross Neighborhood Association.
Katrina Information Network (KIN) is a comprehensive clearinghouse of information and targeted campaigns on behalf of the communities hardest hit by the “perfect storm” of public neglect and private profiteering known as Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Environmental damage. Children without schools or safe places to stay. Homes and neighborhoods in disrepair while contractors make millions. Yet, basic policies for survivors like victims compensation, restitution, rebuild support much less repair of the levees are still not in place. KIN is a collaboration of groups in the Gulf and across the country to build power for change through e-advocacy, grassroots pressure, local actions, resolutions, and selective buying, they seek to build greater pressure for what’s right.
Levees.org is a source for information about the failures of the Federal Government and US Army Corps of Engineers to provide adequate levees and flood protection in New Orleans and nationwide
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Moving Forward Gulf Coast, Inc. is a community effort, led by natives of the Gulf Coast region, who have personally identified families that want, but cannot afford or lack the information, to rebuild their lives in the Gulf Coast. Providing volunteer-based relief, Moving Forward strives for community empowerment and fosters collaborative efforts through community advocacy, training and creative programming.
The New Orleans Worker Justice Coalition strives to organize workers across the color line to fight for a just reconstruction of New Orleans and surrounding areas; to advance racial justice; and to build a city that protects human, civil, and immigrant rights.
People’s Hurricane Relief Fund wants to ensure a grassroots hurricane survivors movement led by people from New Orleans and the Gulf Coast region plays a central role in all decisions made about relief and the rebuilding of their area.
The mission of the Steps Coalition is to promote an equitable recovery and healthy, just, and sustainable communities in South Mississippi by working for affordable housing, community preservation, economic and environmental justice, and human rights.
Unity for the Homeless is a free community service to prevent homelessness by providing affordable rental listings to the community and free listings to landlords.
Environmental Justice
Advocates for Environmental Human Rights (AEHR) is a nonprofit, public interest law firm whose mission is to provide legal services, community organizing support, public education, and campaigns focused on defending and advancing the human right to a healthy environment, and advocating for the human rights of internally displaced Gulf Coast hurricane survivors.
The Deep South Center for Environmental Justice (DSCEJ) Community/University Partnership, under the auspices of Dillard University in New Orleans, provides opportunities for communities, scientific researchers, and decision makers to collaborate on programs and projects that promote the rights of all people to be free from environmental harm as it impacts health, jobs, housing, education, and general quality of life.
Cultural Work and Educational Reform
The Algebra Project is a national, nonprofit organization that uses mathematics as an organizing tool to ensure quality public school education for every child in America, following the belief that every child has a right to a quality education to succeed in this technology-based society and to exercise full citizenship.
Located in Central City New Orleans, Ashe Cultural Arts Center has established a successful practice of cultural art presentation and production, community development, artist support, and the creation of partnerships and collaborations that elevate creative artists of all kinds.
New Orleans Independent Media Center is a collective of independent organizations and independent journalists in and around New Orleans, and clearinghouse of facts and information about New Orleans.
Students at the Center: New Orleans (SAC) is an independent program that works within the Orleans Parish public school system. They are a writing-based program.
America has about another two more steps to go before racism is dead and gone to being black in America becomes no worse than being, say, Jewish. Black Economic Empowerment
Black Economic Empowerment
August 21, 2008
I was a Red Cross volunteer from Ohio,we started in Baton Rouge and were moved to Monroe La. It was like I was watching a horror film. The way people suffered in front of your eyes was enough to give you nightmares, and we couldn’t do anything to help them, just basic medical care. The evacuees that were dropping like flies in the 103 degree heat outside the shelter while they stood in line for hours just to get in our shelter were the worst, the hospitals were overflowing, we had little to no medicine to give these people, and the police were trying to leave because we refused to turn over the names of evacuees that they only wanted so they could put them in jail. The police wanted to search what little belongins they had escaped with and put everything through metal detectors, everything was a weapon to them, the police referred to them as dumb niggers, that this was God’s way of “cleaning out New Orleans” I felt like my hands were tied, it was like the end of the world to me and the babies were so sick, old men dying from the heat outside, this wouldn’t have happened in any other American city, if these people would have been the same color as me, it would have been a whole other news story. There wouldn’t be white people on their roof for days in the heat with no water or food, no white bodies floating bloated in the water for a week, no old people left in a nursing home to drowned or die in the heat. No one called a looter, no one left homeless, the government cared more about sending black men to Iraq when they should have been here fighting the real American war, NEW ORLEANS.
Erin Baldridge
April 27, 2009