York Town News
York alumna lends a hand in New Orleans
By Jennifer L. Saunders
York resident and Colby College graduate Katie Gilroy has been working with young children and students in and around New Orleans on safety and evacuation preparedness in the event of another natural disaster like Hurricane Katrina. A member of AmeriCorps NCCC, Katie’s work includes many facets in a city where — in the lower ninth ward, for example — schools have not yet been touched in the wake of Hurricane Katrina almost two years ago.
Courtesy photos
YORK - York High School alumna Katie Gilroy is continuing her work to make a difference in the Gulf Coast, one city at a time.
Katie is a member of AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps (NCCC), which is a full-time national service program for young adults between the ages of 18 and 24. Individuals like Katie serve in communities across the nation, in teams with other young people, working to make a difference for a term of 10 months.
Katie has been serving at sites along the Gulf Coast. She recently completed her work in Mississippi and is now finishing up her final days of a nine-week term in New Orleans.
Speaking by phone, Katie recently described the seven weeks she had spent to date on various projects with the Southeast Louisiana Chapter of the American Red Cross. Having never been to New Orleans before, Katie said one of the difficult things to see are the number of properties where the marks of Hurricane Katrina remain in the form of water lines on houses and spray-paint left by first responders listing what they found when they went through the homes after the hurricane - including victims and their pets.
Katie and her team of eight members of the NCCC have been living and working with another team of volunteers that trained with them in Denver, Colo., sharing a house owned by a separate organization known as Volunteers for America.
"We've been doing a whole bunch of different jobs," she said, explaining that small groups will take on tasks as needed, with changes from day to day. "The thing that I mainly have been doing is a program called Masters of Disaster, which is a national curriculum developed to be brought into schools to teach the kids about disaster preparedness."
The children of New Orleans and its surrounding parishes, she explained, have had to deal with many hurricanes - including the devastation of Hurricane Katrina almost two years ago - and have more recently faced the threat of tornadoes in the area.
"We've taken the part of the curriculum on hurricanes and tornadoes and focused on that," Katie said, explaining she has worked with other team members to create a curriculum for children from pre-kindergarten through high school, complete with activities to make the process more interesting than simply hearing a lecture.
The groups have worked to share information on what to pack, how to evacuate and what the warning signs are of a tornado.
"We have them talk about what to pack ahead of time in case they need to evacuate," Katie said, "and we give them evacuation guides."
The goal, she said, is to support the resiliency of these youngsters from the disasters and they have survived in the past, and to teach them ways to protect themselves in the event of another disaster.
"Lots of children don't know their parents' names and relatives' names and phone numbers, so it's really important that they get thinking about and talking about those things so they don't get separated from their families," Katie said.
To help the younger children feel that they are not alone in facing weather disasters, Katie said, "I tell a lot of them about how York flooded just a few weeks ago."
Another team member from Auburn spoke about the ice storms of the 1990s.
"Kids love to hear about snow and ice down here," she said.
During the month of May alone, Katie visited about 15 schools.
"It's close to 5,000 people we've talked with," she said of the program, which has been ongoing for a couple of months. In addition, the volunteers have given presentations at fairs and other events to reach a wider audience of children and families.
Others on the team have focused on needs assessment surveys, she said, as many Federal Emergency Management Agency emergency trailer parks still remain open in parking lots and other such sites throughout the area.
"What we've actually done is go around to the trailer parks and put up a little flyer on the trailer along with an evacuation guide for a walk-in center in the park a day or two later," she explained, with a goal of helping people find the time to fill out a survey on what happened, where they are at in their recovery process and what they need to get back into an apartment or a house. "We take down all the information and some people stay in the office each day and enter all the surveys into a database."
One organization received a grant toward major appliances and bed sets as well as rental assistance for the next two months, and Katie has been calling people whose applications included a need for furniture and appliances to verify that the need remains.
"That way, it makes it easier when the case managers look at it," she said. "If the person qualifies, they can get what they need."
With school ending for the summer, Katie has also been working with StayLocal.org putting together an online database of businesses that have opened since the storm.
And what is next for Katie?
"We actually drive back to Denver and spend a week there debriefing this project and briefing for our next project," she said.
The teams will all be shuffled, and Katie will work with a new team of volunteers for July and August and then be back with her original team for the next project in September and October.
For her part, Katie said she would recommend the experience to anyone.
"This has been awesome," she said. "There are just so many people down here helping out in so many different volunteer organizations."
This is the second in a series of reports on Katie Gilroy and her work with AmeriCorps NCCC in the Gulf Coast.
