Stronger in the Broken Places: A Report from New Orleans
Posted by Ashley Graham on Wednesday, August 25, 2010
This Sunday, August 29th will be the 5th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and the catastrophic failure of the levees. Various media outlets will mark the occasion with b-roll packages and talking heads flying in for a few days to make their assessments. President Obama will be flying in to commemorate the day. But the full story is so much greater than a few minutes on the news could convey. Given the special relationship that the Share Our Strength network has with New Orleans, we wanted to provide you with some firsthand updates from the frontlines.
In the last year alone, this city has enjoyed winning the Super Bowl, being touted in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal as a hub of entrepreneurship, serving as the setting for of HBO’s new David Simon series,“TREME,” and electing Mayor Landrieu by a clear majority that crossed racial lines.
As the only city with a majority of charter schools, New Orleans will be viewed as a critical laboratory for the charter education movement. Schools like MLK Charter School for Science and Technology and John McDonough High School (both 2006 Conference of Leaders service sites) have renovated, reopened, filled their halls with students and raised test scores. The Samuel Green School is bursting at the seams with more than 400 K-8 students. The Edible Schoolyard there has a lush garden that yields produce used in cooking classes, shared with families and sold at a local market. Their gleaming teaching kitchen and improved cafeteria program are providing best practices sought by schools throughout the city and beyond. Superintendent Doris Voitier has transformed St. Bernard Parish’s high performing school system, opened several new schools in state of the art facilities, and earned the Kennedy Library Foundation’s “Profile in Courage” award in 2007.
Remarkably, there are more restaurants open for business today than there were before the storm. Share Our Strength chefs like Donald Link, John Besh, Frank Brigtsen, Adolfo Garcia and Susan Spicer have all opened new restaurants, which are drawing crowds and strong reviews. Speaking of restaurants, Café Reconcile is still going strong and serving their delicious catfish, and now similar programs such as Café Hope and Liberty’s Kitchen combine a restaurant business with a nonprofit job training component. Liberty’s Kitchen will also be a school foodservice provider for New Orleans College Prep as part of a pilot program funded by the Emeril Lagasse Foundation.
Leah Chase has reopened Dooky Chase restaurant, fed Presidents Bush and Obama, served as the inspiration for the main character in Disney’s most recent animated feature, “The Princess and the Frog,” and welcomed her handsome and talented grandson Edgar “Dook” Chase IV as sous chef in her kitchen. Around the corner, a great-grandchild is making a great-grandmother proud: Kerry Seaton is now running Willie Mae’s Scotch House restaurant and it’s as popular as ever.
All the public housing projects were razed and new construction has finally begun. Most are being replaced with mixed income redevelopments, and there are other housing efforts founded by celebrities and charismatic leaders which are helping to fill the affordable housing gap including: Project Home Again (Gentilly, Barnes & Noble CEO Len Riggio), Make it Right (Lower 9th - Brad Pitt), St. Bernard Project (St. Bernard Parish, CNN Heroes Liz McCartney and Zach Rosenburg), and Pontchartrain Park (Pontchartrain Park, Wendell Pierce).
With all the progress (slow in coming though it may have been), so many New Orleanians thought we had turned the corner on being the country’s Bad News Bears … but here we are again. New Orleans and our neighbors in the southern parishes and along the Gulf Coast have been battered by multiple storms and now the oil spill – testing the limits of human and ecological resilience. Our fishermen are (again) facing uphill battles of getting back on the water and convincing the market that Gulf seafood is safe. The subsequent hurricanes (Rita, Gustav, and Ike), the recession and the oil spill have only exacerbated the region’s food security issues, which makes our work more important than ever.
The challenges and sad statistics endure: One in five children in Louisiana is at risk of hunger, and the state has the worst rate of childhood hunger for children 0-5 in the nation. More than 84% of public school children qualify for free and reduced school meals and only 13% of those are currently able to access summer food.
At the same time, there is unprecedented collaboration among nonprofit partners and great momentum around our issues including summer and school food programs. Share Our Strength is playing a leadership role in the New Orleans Food Policy Advisory Council, currently focused on improving access to and the quality of school food, and Mayor Landrieu’s Task Force on Youth & Families. We recently held a breakfast briefing about our No Kid Hungry strategy in late July that was attended by a diverse group of 65 committed stakeholders across a variety of sectors. We believe that our progress in ending childhood hunger will be one of the sectors that will make New Orleans a model in social innovation.
There is much work yet to be done, but this place is persevering and growing stronger in the broken places. Thanks to so many of you who have visited, donated, or otherwise shared your strength to help.
Docked shrimp boat:
The amazing Leah Chase:
Share Our Strength’s Jenny Dirksen and Mary Sue Milliken in Mardi Gras Masks - Share Our Strength sign in background:
Frank Brigtsen cooking at the Crescent City Farmers Market:
August 25, 2010 | 2 comment(s) | Tags: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, no kid hungry
Comments
2 reader comments so far.
Ashley, you have told a story that badly needs telling, not just to Share Our Strength, but beyond. Perhaps Clay or Salma in Communications might have some ideas for how to pitch this blog to news sites? Would you be interested? and I'll be sharing it w/ my IFEC group as part of the preparation for our Conference there in November. Cheers to you for your strength and ability to witness and report the positive changes for us all.
Posted by Cate Puzo on August 26, 2010
Ashley,
So glad you are on the ground there. No amount of looking in from the outside can replace the opportunity you have every day to bear witness to the challenges, the changes and the hope that we know exists. Bringing our strategy there to ensure that all kids have access to quality meals throughout the years has never been more important!
Posted by Debbie Shore on August 29, 2010
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