AmeriCorps NCCC Student on Gap Year Reports from Camp Hope, New Orleans

Sandy is taking a gap year between high school and college to serve with AmeriCorps NCCC (National Civilian Community Corps). Her adventure has involved traveling to New Orleans to refurbish buildings devastated by Hurricane Katrina and working as a teacher’s assistant at a middle school in Denver. The last three months of her volunteer service will be spent working with Habitat for Humanity in New Orleans.

Sandy is from a suburb of Dayton, Ohio, and attended a community college for a short time following graduation from high school in June 2007. When asked why she opted to take a gap year, Sandy said, “I heard about NCCC from a friend…. and thought it would be a better alternative to figure out what I wanted to do with my life and career, than to waste time and money trying to figure out the same thing in college.” When asked what she hopes to accomplish through her year of service, she said, “Thus far, I have accomplished a lot through my service with AmeriCorps NCCC…including a great deal of personal growth and maturity….I can't say that I've figured out what I want to do with my life, but I have been able to somewhat narrow it down.” AmeriCorps NCCC provides students with housing, monthly living stipend, and an education grant of more than $4,000 after completion of one year of service.

Sandy's Blog Post

So we have all begun our final project with NCCC. For some teams, part or all of their final project will be working with the red cross on disaster relief. Most of the Denver campus teams were sent on disaster relief projects because of the recent hurricanes and tropical storms. However, my team, Fire 6, is one of few teams that have stayed on their original project. My team has a split project this round. Half of our time will be spent working in the Camp Hope kitchen, and the other half will be spent working with Habitat for Humanity of the Greater New Orleans area. Camp Hope is a volunteer housing center in St. Bernard Parish, New Orleans. It houses hundreds of volunteers, and usually 2-3 NCCC teams. Oddly enough, this round will be my third time in a row living at Camp Hope. It sounds like it would be something unfortunate, but personally, I cannot express how happy I am to be here. I have really fallen in love with New Orleans, and I have spent so much time here at Camp Hope that it has really become my home away from home. Spending so much time here has also made me very passionate about rebuilding the city. As I said, this feels like home to me, and I want my city to be back in good shape. Slowly but surely, it's getting there, but there is still a great deal of work to be done. Anyways, today is the first day of work in the kitchen. As of right now, there are only two NCCC teams at camp hope, and >10 volunteers. The rest of Camp Hope's inhabitants are long-term volunteers, still making their way back from Hurricane Gustav evacuation, or are NCCC teams and are currently on disaster and will not return for at least a month. The other people that are normally here are volunteer groups, which are usually only here for a week or so, have cancelled their stay because of the weather. So, as of now, my team is working to clean the kitchen after Gustav, and as far as I know, we will not be cooking for another few days. Until then, we'll all be eating MRE's (meals ready to eat). YUM!