Rebuilding in New Orleans: Katie Sims and Sacred Heart Prep

On December 19th 2006, a group of 18 high school students and 7 teachers and parents from the Sacred Heart School (SHS) School in Atherton, California left on a five-day trip to New Orleans to work on Hurricane Katrina relief projects and to touch the lives of many who suffered from this disaster. Besides learning about the economic devastation of New Orleans, the group was touched to learn first-hand about the social devastation. Families’ and friends’ lives were drastically changed when Hurricane Katrina devastated the city of New Orleans on August 29th 2005.

The SHS team split into two groups to help to "gut" two houses by removing personal items and debris still remaining over a year after the hurricane had hit.

Student Katie Sims was deeply touched and frustrated by seeing how little had been done to help the citizens of New Orleans after the small window of a few months of publicity following the disaster. Consequently, Katie wrote a powerful letter to People Magazine. She voiced her own feelings and gave voice to some of the people whom she had met in New Orleans: “They feel that the government and their country have let them down because the help they need is not the help that they are getting… We need to show them that America still cares.” Katie also criticized the lack of publicity about the continuing problems that exist in New Orleans, “Our country has failed New Orleans and most of us are oblivious to that fact… People magazine should have updated articles on a consistent basis to let their dependant readers know that New Orleans still needs their help as much as they did the month after the levees broke loose.”

Visit a website about the SHS trip to New Orleans.