The Ole Miss Stamps Leadership Scholars recently teamed up with Youth Rebuilding New Orleans for a day of service and team building. Volunteers for YRNO help rebuild distressed and foreclosed homes, which are then sold to teachers in an effort to stabilize neighborhoods and positively impact the education system.
Featured below are photos and quotes from the Scholars about this experience:
“Our world tends to think of problems for as long as they’re in the news: education is in crisis when new statistics on the achievement gap are released, minorities suffer police brutality when a homeless man is shot in Skid Row, and obesity is only an epidemic every couple of months when Congress holds a hearing. But these things are constant issues people live with day in and day out- like the continuing recovery from Hurricane Katrina. I brought my fellow Stamps Scholars home with me to explore the city of New Orleans and to learn about the legacy of Katrina through service to a neighborhood still fighting it’s way back after the storm, Midcity/Bayou St. John. The Stamps Foundation goes beyond providing us with the financial resources to serve; it gives us a community of students who challenge each other to better use our gifts and who support each other as we strive to be agents of change. Our trip provided us with the opportunity to become a more close-knit group while engaging issues that are important both to the community and many Scholars– sustainable and equitable housing and disaster recovery.”
~Kathryn James
“We were given the task of bonding as a group, so we decided to take a road trip to New Orleans to work together to rebuild a home in Mid-City that was damaged in Hurricane Katrina. It’s truly amazing how service of others can bring together so many different personalities and create such a unique bonding experience. We were there to rebuild a house, but we were really building up our cohesion as a group just as much. I am so thankful to have had this opportunity to get to know my fellow Stamps Scholars a little better, and I am grateful to the Stamps Foundation for bringing together this group of people and giving us the means to partake in enriching experiences such as this.”
~Page Lagarde
~Dylan Ritter
“This trip was so valuable to the Ole Miss Stamps Scholars because we were able to appreciate such a tactile form of service through Youth Rebuilding New Orleans while team building within our own cohort.”
~Kathryn Prendergast
This article was originally posted by Youth Rebuilding New Orleans. Here’s the link: http://yrno.com/ole-miss-stamps-scholars/
All photos taken by: Jack Styczynski