VOAD Award for New Orleans Rebuild

Disaster Response

• Join the advocacy effort to support Gulf Coast Recovery through the Gulf Coast Civic Works Act

The United Church of Christ and Church World Service
Receive Award for New Orleans Rebuild Blitz

Rebuild Blitz Info, Press Coverage & Photos

churchworldservice.org
Neighborhood: New Orleans

neighborhoodneworleans.net

Slide show with commentary by UCC pastor from Maryland, rebuild blitz volunteer

VOAD Press Release

Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster (VOAD)

Neighborhood: New Orleans, Rebuilding Homes, Reclaiming Hope, an ecumenical partnership of Church World Service (CWS), is a 2009 recipient of National VOAD’s (Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster) Innovative Program of the Year.

Neighborhood: New Orleans is a program to return 12 families to their homes following
a four-week building blitz, which concluded on Friday, May 15. The homes are in a New Orleans neighborhood called Little Woods, a forgotten area destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.

At least 125 volunteers in purple shirts gathered in celebration of the neighborhood rebuilding effort and Gloria Mouton's return home, just before picking up their hammers and going back to work.

Church World Service and ten denominational partners organized a volunteer effort that is rebuilding or repairing 12 families' homes in the Little Woods neighborhood of New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward this spring.

Photo: Matt Hackworth/Church World Service, May 2009

The project was led by Florence Coppola, Executive for National Disaster Ministries for the United Church of Christ, and Bonnie Vollmering, Associate Director for Domestic Emergency Response with Church World Service.

Ten different CWS partners, including the United Church of Christ, participated in the rebuild blitz. Neighborhood: New Orleans was honored at an Awards Banquet on May 20 during the Annual VOAD Conference in Salt Lake City, Utah.

While 12 homes is only a fraction of the work left to be done in New Orleans, and all along the Gulf Coast, the hope of the participating groups is that so much progress, all at once and in a concentrated area, will bring hope to the entire neighborhood.

National VOAD is a national coordinating body for every major community-based and faith-based disaster response organization, including the American Red Cross, LDS Charities, The Salvation Army, and Feeding America.

The member organizations of National VOAD focus on all stages of disaster: preparedness, relief, response, recovery, and mitigation. Working collaboratively, the members of National VOAD are the driving force behind disaster recovery in the United States.

• Join the advocacy effort to support Gulf Coast Recovery through the Gulf Coast Civic Works Act

Ohio Conference Disaster Response Ministry