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From the Ground Up

Service project focuses on recovery in a Native American reservation

As part of AFSC’s multifaceted response to last year’s Gulf Coast disasters, a group of volunteers recently helped rebuild homes in a Native American reservation in Louisiana.

From January 4 to 18, volunteers with the AFSC/Intermountain Yearly Meeting Joint Service Project traveled to a rural area, about two hours south of New Orleans, to help several families hit hard by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The volunteers served members of the Isle a Jean Charles band of the Biloxi-Chitimacha [Choctaw].

The group took its lead from the community, doing the work that was requested. This included constructing a building from the ground up, patching roofs on some area homes, and constructing kitchen cabinets. A return trip is planned for early March to continue the work.

Since June 1990, AFSC and the Intermountain Yearly Meeting (IMYM) of the Religious Society of Friends have conducted a special form of discovery and service involving youth and adults. Projects are designed to connect small, intergenerational groups (ages 14 and up) with the work of AFSC in the U.S. Southwest and Mexico which overlap within the IMYM.

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