17th
Lower 9-Hawai’i
We are from Hawai’i and recently came back from a trip to the Lower 9th Ward in New Orleans. The intention was to volunteer to help rebuild homes. While there, however, we began to realize that a lot more needs to go into building a community than simply yeilding a hammer. It’s about creating a community worth coming back to.
Right now the Lower 9th Ward is a bleak wasteland of broken promises and inaction. This is the ground zero of Hurricane Katrina and the poorest population of New Orleans. As you walk amongst the wreckage you get a feeling of complete neglect. Unfortunately the majority of evacuees (most of them elderly) who fled their homes three years ago are still displaced with no hope of being able to move back anytime soon.
We would like to create a project that brings awareness to the harsh realities the community members of the Lower 9th Ward face by extending that community to involve Hawai’i. We would like to show those who live in the Lower 9th that people from Hawai’i care about their problems.
