ROHS Interact Club

Forty-nine students and their chaperones retuned to Royal Oak Saturday evening after a week of volunteering in the slowly recovering New Orleans suburb of Chalmette, Louisiana. It was the first trip of what promises to be an annual effort by the new Royal Oak High School Interact Club.

The students spent the week in a campground and were bused daily into areas of New Orleans devastated over two years ago by Hurricane Katrina. Over 4,000 homes and other buildings have remained essentially untouched since then, and many of them are scheduled for demolition unless homeowners find a way to save them.

The Royal Oak students cleared the Chalmette Civic Center of debris in preparation for reconstruction, removed debris from abandoned FEMA trailers to prepare land for a restored playground, gutted a school which had been damaged by both hurricane and vandalism so that it could be turned into a new teen center, and gutted two homes so that the homeowners could begin the process of reconstruction.

“They were amazing,” said National Relief Network supervisor Mary Skelonc. “They worked hard and quickly, way ahead of schedule, and saved these people literally months of time.”

One day the students waded through several inches of floodwater in a downpour to reach a home site. Junior Jenny Orletski and Sophomore Kat Wittekind dug through the waterlogged paperwork to help the homeowner recover his lost life insurance policy, a document he had feared lost forever.

“No one was unmoved by what we saw,” said Interact advisor and ROHS teacher Steve Chisnell. “We saw a grocery store where the food has literally been rotting since the storm. No one will go in and there is no money to demolish it.”

After four solid work days, students spent their final day in New Orleans meeting residents, exploring the bayou on a swamp tour, and having a celebratory dinner in the French Quarter.

“It was a good trip,” said chaperone and school board member Michael Hartman. “There aren’t many chances in education for students to have the freedom to test their limits.”

The students each raised $500 to pay for the trip, but already they are hoping to return next year. “There are always needs for volunteerism around the country,” said Skelonc. “And there are at least ten years of work left in New Orleans.”

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