UNO Students Serve Katrina Victims
by Brenton Thompson
Most students took advantage of fall break by heading home, working extra hours, spending time with friends or just relaxing. Greek Endeavor and Campus Crusade led a group of 25 students to Slidell, LA. to help with ongoing Hurricane Katrina relief efforts.
Generous donations totaling $6,000 from family and friends allowed the trip to take place.
As UNO’s homecoming week concluded, the students crammed into three vans for a 20-hour drive to a city where most residents no longer had a place to call home. City streets once lined with houses were now lined with piles of rubble and trash.Locals estimated that nearly 80 percent of the New Orleans suburb was shut down. Houses that only had minor damage were crammed with numerous families. In many cases, the owners of these homes didn’t know any of the families that had now become their houseguests.
The UNO group took two days to help with the relief efforts organized by The First Baptist Church of Slidell. It took hundreds of college students, the American Red Cross and the members of the National Guard to run the operations that were set up on the church property.During this time, students were provided numerous ways to help out. Some handed out warm lunches, cold water and bags of ice to cars as they drove through the church parking lot.
The church provided over 9,000 free meals to hurricane victims each day.Other students helped stock tents with clothing, canned food, toiletries and other necessities that were supplied for the victims. Some of the male students spent time restoring the church by shoveling sand underneath portables to provide a sturdy foundation and tore down molded ceiling tiles and insulation ruined by flooding.
While many students worked at the church, each day a small group performed a “mud out” on a house in the community. This was a day-long process that included tearing out walls, cabinets and floor tiles that had been ruined by flood waters. While working in the houses, the crew members had an opportunity to talk to the residents about the storm. Though exhausted at the end of the trip, most of the students were disappointed to leave. “It’s amazing how quickly our hearts became dedicated to these people, considering the short amount of a time that we were here,” said Julie Grotelueschen, a sophomore in Chi Omega. “It was hard for us to pack up and go home when there was so much work left to be done.”
With the success of this trip, Greek Endeavor and Campus Crusade are organizing another hurricane relief trip for Spring Break 2006 and are expecting about 300 students. Interested individuals can contact Tyler Zach at tyler.zach@uscm.org for more information or visit www.NebraskaRelief.com after January 1.
Most students took advantage of fall break by heading home, working extra hours, spending time with friends or just relaxing. Greek Endeavor and Campus Crusade led a group of 25 students to Slidell, LA. to help with ongoing Hurricane Katrina relief efforts.
Generous donations totaling $6,000 from family and friends allowed the trip to take place.
As UNO’s homecoming week concluded, the students crammed into three vans for a 20-hour drive to a city where most residents no longer had a place to call home. City streets once lined with houses were now lined with piles of rubble and trash.Locals estimated that nearly 80 percent of the New Orleans suburb was shut down. Houses that only had minor damage were crammed with numerous families. In many cases, the owners of these homes didn’t know any of the families that had now become their houseguests.
The UNO group took two days to help with the relief efforts organized by The First Baptist Church of Slidell. It took hundreds of college students, the American Red Cross and the members of the National Guard to run the operations that were set up on the church property.During this time, students were provided numerous ways to help out. Some handed out warm lunches, cold water and bags of ice to cars as they drove through the church parking lot.
The church provided over 9,000 free meals to hurricane victims each day.Other students helped stock tents with clothing, canned food, toiletries and other necessities that were supplied for the victims. Some of the male students spent time restoring the church by shoveling sand underneath portables to provide a sturdy foundation and tore down molded ceiling tiles and insulation ruined by flooding.
While many students worked at the church, each day a small group performed a “mud out” on a house in the community. This was a day-long process that included tearing out walls, cabinets and floor tiles that had been ruined by flood waters. While working in the houses, the crew members had an opportunity to talk to the residents about the storm. Though exhausted at the end of the trip, most of the students were disappointed to leave. “It’s amazing how quickly our hearts became dedicated to these people, considering the short amount of a time that we were here,” said Julie Grotelueschen, a sophomore in Chi Omega. “It was hard for us to pack up and go home when there was so much work left to be done.”
With the success of this trip, Greek Endeavor and Campus Crusade are organizing another hurricane relief trip for Spring Break 2006 and are expecting about 300 students. Interested individuals can contact Tyler Zach at tyler.zach@uscm.org for more information or visit www.NebraskaRelief.com after January 1.
posted by Tyler Zach at 2:35 PM
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