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Dec. 9 - 17, 2005
Baton Rouge & New Orleans, Louisiana
Team 6 is the last team in the Phase 1 TOP-Katrina/Rita Project. In spite of the wind-down of the project it has been a busy week. The kick-off to our week was a large workshop on 12/10/05 for approximately 80 teachers and administrators at St. Mary’s Dominican High school. The positive relationships formed that day have led to a request for TOP to send a small team back to Dominican High School in January for 5 days to help them prepare for the re-opening of their school on 1/17/06 (it closed only 6 days after the beginning of the school year). TOP would provide workshops to teachers and administrators, as well as to the students’ families. Individual sessions have also been requested.
Team 6, like the previous 5 teams traveled many miles each day to provide requested services to Catholic Charities’ staff, and in some cases, their clients, in the Baton Rouge (BR) and New Orleans (NO) areas. Agencies served by Team 6 this week are: Wynhoven, a NO facility for the frail elderly, Hope Haven, a NO residential facility for troubled youth, Ciara Community Services, a NO multi-focus agency that serves the severely and persistently mentally ill, St. Jerome, a church with community center serving the homeless, St. John the Baptist, a NO emergency assistance program, St. Jean Vienney, a church with community center, the NOCC Crisis Unit, and the St. Charles Counseling Center in Luling. Five trauma outreach groups, thirty-three individual SE sessions, and seven meetings with administrators in both BR and NO were provided.
Team members were touched by many stories of heroism and selflessness. At Ciara, for example, one staff member and the cook evacuated 14 frail seriously mentally ill clients following Katrina. These two intrepid heroes spent 2 months living away from their own families in order to provide familiarity and containment to their 14 clients. They eventually ended up in Jackson, Mississippi where they were welcomed by the community. During their two months in Jackson, community members brought them food and took the clients on outings. The staff member told us that the clients thrived with this attention. The relationships forged during the 2 months were so strong that a reunion has been planned. The 16 people from Ciara will travel back to see their hosts in Jackson.
Throughout our time here in Louisiana, each of us has been touched by the generosity and open-hearts of Catholic Charities staff at all levels. While the days are long, the commutes up to 2 hours each way per day, and unexpected scheduling changes require a sense of humor and flexibility; we have bonded with each other in ways that will remain with us forever. We have been fortunate to have a team with a boisterous sense of humor and great sense of fun. Our mornings and evenings have been full of laughter even as our eyes droop from fatigue.
Since Team 6 is the last one for this particular project, we have packed up the house in Baton Rouge that CC provided for us. By Saturday 12/17/05, everything was in boxes. Those items that TOP had purchased will be donated to the disaster relief effort. The paperclips were picked up off the floor, refrigerator cleaned, and the mountainous bags of trash readied for pick-up. Tables and chairs were folded back up, the shelves taken down and packed…and… the air mattresses deflated as we headed home to our own beds. The teams that came in early November created a wondrous system for organizing the work. Clipboards were labeled with the name of each agency or group we worked with. Attached to the clipboard was a map of how to get there from the BR house, the contact person and phone #, a description of that agency’s mandate and clients, and copies of workshops previous teams had offered. Those of us who came in later had an easier time getting the work done because of the thoughtfulness of those who had come in before us. Thank you to all of you!
Each of us on Team 6 feels truly blessed to have been able to serve in this disaster setting, apply our trauma skills where the need is so great, and see the human capacity for resilience in action in a myriad of ways. We are grateful to FHE-TOP and to Catholic Charities for entrusting us with this work and allowing us the opportunity to be a small part of this resilient Gulf state community.
TOP Team – Week 6
Team Leader - Laurie Leitch, New Mexico
Clinical Supervisor - Julia Gombos, California
Su Russell, Canada
Jeanne Du Rivage, Hawaii
Betty Jo Scharer, North Carolina
Ellen Elgart, New Mexico
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katrina/rita
