New Orleans, Biloxi Projects Included with Annual Spring Break Service Trips

For nearly two decades, DePaul University’s "Alternative Spring Break" service immersion program has afforded hundreds of students the opportunity to bypass partying on the beach for a more enriching option of serving others and studying possible solutions to numerous social issues facing the country.

This year, the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Katrina to the Gulf Coast brought an immediate and pressing need for assistance. Thus, two groups of the approximately 80 DePaul students taking part in this year’s program will be departing March 18, heading to New Orleans and Biloxi, Miss., to help victims of the storms and floods to rebuild.

In New Orleans, students will join up with Operation Helping Hands, a relief effort by Catholic Charities, Archdiocese of New Orleans. During their week-long stay, the team of students will focus on residence and neighborhood cleanup for the disabled, the elderly and those without the financial means to reoccupy their homes. They are scheduled to perform such tasks as removing appliances, furniture and household goods, damaged walls, ceilings, flooring and wiring from flood-damaged homes. Teams are also scheduled to spray the residence to kill bacteria and mold once it is cleared. An estimated 92,000 homes in the city and 200,000 in the New Orleans metro area were severely damaged or destroyed by Hurricane Katrina and subsequent floods.

In Biloxi, students will also assist with the storm recovery effort, helping to gut damaged homes, clean up debris, and assist with reconstruction projects. Hurricane Katrina killed 238 people in Mississippi, and an estimated 90 percent of the buildings on the Gulfport-Biloxi coastline were wiped out by Katrina’s storm surge.

"We had great interest from our students in helping the Gulf Coast," said Casey Bowles, DePaul’s service immersion trip coordinator. "There is still much work to be done to recover from Katrina, so scheduling some of our service immersion trips there seemed like a natural extension of what our Alternative Spring Break program is all about."

In addition to the Gulf Coast trips, student groups will also fan out to seven other locales around the country for additional service immersion projects. Students will travel to urban environments like New York, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, as well as rural locations like Cranks Creek, Ky., and Okolona, Miss. Participants will work on such issues as urban poverty, homelessness, civil rights, peace and justice, rural poverty and education.

The trips are inspired by DePaul’s mission of service to others in the spirit of the university’s namesake patron, Vincent de Paul, the 17th-century French saint who was known as the "Apostle of Charity."

With a total enrollment of 23,148 students on two city and four suburban campuses, DePaul is the tenth-largest private, not-for-profit university in the United States and the largest Catholic university in the nation. DePaul is an innovative and diverse university offering pragmatic educational programs that instill values, including a commitment to community service.