The Robert Goodis Foundation

On the 29th of August, 2005, Hurricane Katrina made its second landfall.  In addition to the havoc this storm wreaked throughout the Gulf, Katrina led to the catastrophic failure of the New Orleans levees and the flooding significant portions of Greater New Orleans, Louisiana.

The storm claimed 1,836 lives and, to this day, has left 705 persons missing, most likely carried-out to sea.  Over 1,500 of the fatalities occurred in Louisiana, primarily in New Orleans.

Generally, the facts surrounding the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina are not disputed.  In fact, much of the controversy has quelled with time.  While critics like Robert Draper have continued to make noise, it seems the average person has basically forgotten about New Orleans.

The purpose of discussing New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina on RobertGoodis|Foundation is not to educate readers on the facts.  If you want the facts, get them here, on Wikipedia.  Rather, it is my hope that people will remember The Big Easy and that discussing it on this site may contribute to that.

To this day, New Orleans has not fully recovered.  Entire neighborhoods have fallen off the map.  A vicious cycle continues where past residents are unable to return to NOLA until basic social necessities such as medical care and schools return, and medical practitioners and schools will not open their doors in New Orleans until the communities return. The situation is improving, slowly but surely.

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What can we do?

Anybody can help.

From home: Ask your religious congregation, school, club, or community group to contribute some funds to New Orleans efforts.  If you cannot find the resources to collect money for the cause, try collecting books.  Entire schools and libraries were demolished in the flood, and many still lack sufficient materials to serve the public.  If you can't find books, think of something else - just about anything and everything can be donated, if you know where to look.  You can also participate in fundraiser walks and events for charities like KaTREEna, a group that has worked to plant over 2,175 trees in an effort to help replace the 100,000-plus trees eradicated in the storm.

Hands-on: Go there.  Volunteer in New Orleans.  Help clean up and rebuild.  Help plant trees with KaTREEna.  Volunteer at a soup kitchen or a hospital, if you can.  Certainly you can volunteer in your own hometown, too, but try to do something special for New Orleans.  Plus, if you go to The Big Easy, you can do more than just volunteer to help out.  Tourism is a great stimulus for the local economy, and is a major driving force that is keeping the city alive.  It's a little less direct than rebuilding a school, maybe, but you can do your part to help New Orleans just by attending Mardi Gras.

If you want to know more, or if you are interested in helping out in any way, contact Stephen Tremaine of Bard College.  He is a native of New Orleans who has worked extensively to rejuvenate the region.

For more information, and to learn how you can help, please visit some of our partners.  Refer to the Resources and Links page for a complete list, or start here:

Levees.org
The Katrina Myth
GlobalGreen New Orleans
Hike for KaTREEna
Bard New Orleans

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Still have questions? Please contact Robert anytime! We look forward to hearing from you.

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 Robert Goodis working to clean out the destroyed Andrew H. Wilson Elementary School in the Broadmoor Community of New Orleans (January 2007)