Nearly three years after Hurricane Katrina hit the New Orleans area, St. Bernard Project co-founders Liz McCartney and Zack Rosenburg don’t want anyone to forget there is still work to be done.
‘‘The problems are solvable,” Rosenburg said at a Sunday gathering in Silver Spring of more than 80 people to honor McCartney and Rosenburg for their rebuilding work in St. Bernard Parish in Louisiana and to spread awareness of the struggle many residents still face.
‘‘Where the government failed, people haven’t,” he said.
Suzanne Mintz, a New Orleans native, hosted the event at her home. Her family has volunteered with relief efforts many times since the disaster.
‘‘St. Bernard is so competent; their purpose is so on target,” she said. ‘‘There are a lot of well-meaning organizations down there that aren’t organized.”
McCartney, a Friendship Heights native, and Rosenburg started the project, based just east of New Orleans, in August 2006. Both had jobs in Washington, D.C.: she worked for a nonprofit and he was a criminal defense attorney. But the destruction moved them to take action.
‘‘There was an overwhelming need,” Rosenburg said. ‘‘The rebuilding work just wasn’t being done. They were homeless and despondent.”
They first volunteered six months after the hurricane, going to New Orleans for a month in February 2006. But after that month, they saw that many people who needed help weren’t getting any, so they decided to take charge with their own project.
‘‘They needed action, results, solutions,” Rosenburg said. ‘‘We wanted to remove barriers for families who wanted to come home.”
McCartney and Rosenburg focused their work on St. Bernard Parish, where all 27,000 homes were destroyed and the middle-class families who lived there had been displaced.
‘‘The victims are good people,” Rosenburg emphasized. ‘‘The residents should be treated the way we’d want our family to be treated.”
With just $12,000, several volunteers and eight to 10 weeks, one house can be rebuilt, McCartney and Rosenburg said. Though the project started small, today the St. Bernard Project averages 200 volunteers daily. The project has rebuilt 121 homes in the last two years and is working on 28 others.
McCartney was recently named a CNN Hero, though she downplays the recognition.
‘‘It’s about spreading the word,” she said.
McCartney was in Maryland to visit family. She and Rosenburg attended the event, planned around their schedule, at Mintz’s home.
Last August, Mintz and her husband, Jon Elkind, her 17-year-old son, Ben, and 20 Montgomery County high school seniors went to volunteer for a week with St. Bernard Project. The group raised more than $9,000, most of which went to the project and the rest going to travel expenses.
‘‘I was really shocked by how bad it still was,” said 18-year-old Jake Rosner, a Richard Montgomery High School student. ‘‘I assumed it would be mostly back, but there was no electricity in some areas, [with] stores boarded up, neighborhoods desolate.”
Since then, ‘‘all my breaks have been in New Orleans,” Ben Elkind said. He and his family went over winter and spring breaks, and they plan to return during the summer.
‘‘I still have a lot of family there,” Mintz said. ‘‘My family was fine, but so many people weren’t. I certainly needed to do something about it.”
‘‘We’re going to volunteer this summer,” said Lynn Klein of Potomac, who attended the event at Mintz’s home with her daughter, Lexi, and husband, Jim.
Montgomery Blair High School juniors Hannah Nelson, 17, and Yelena Johnson, 18, have planned a dance party for Sunday in the ballroom of the Grand Hyatt in Bethesda, to raise money. They expect to raise around $2,000, and with four more parties planned, hope to raise enough to rebuild a house.
More than $10,000 was pledged at Mintz’s home on Sunday.
