<< CIPA in Brief - Spring 2009
Fellows Launch New Orleans Professional Partnership
Lisa Jervey Lennox
“New Orleans really moves you — it’s a special place,” says Sara Rudow.
“The power of the city comes from the people who live there,” explains Justin Villere. “It doesn’t matter how little they have themselves — they may be living in FEMA trailers — but still they want to share what they have with you. They are genuinely hospitable and gracious people. That’s what makes you want to keep coming back.”
“You receive so much more than you are ever able to give,” Nadine Skinner adds. “Every day at lunch, the family and neighbors of the woman whose house we worked on would get together and cook us amazing food. It was a real intimate family community that they welcomed us to.”
Rudow, Villere, and Skinner — all second-year CIPA fellows — are the founders and leaders of the CIPA-New Orleans Professional Partnership, otherwise known as CIPA-NOLA (NOLA represents New Orleans, Louisiana). Last spring, the Women in Public Policy (WIPP) organization arranged CIPA’s first trip to New Orleans to help rebuild homes damaged by Hurricane Katrina. Villere, Rudow and Skinner were inspired by that experience and returned to Ithaca with plans to formalize an ongoing, sustainable commitment to the city. Thus was born CIPA-NOLA, a student initiative that gives fellows hands-on professional consulting experience, while contributing to the New Orleans rebuilding process.
In the past year, these three fellows have invested an enormous amount of time and energy into building CIPA-NOLA. Besides planning and executing the spring break trip, they connected three students to consult with New Orleans-affiliated nonprofits, planned a colloquium, initiated several fundraising endeavors, organized four fall discussion groups on New Orleans-related issues, and launched a web site (www.cipanola.cipa.cornell.edu).
The passion that Rudow, Villere and Skinner exude for rebuilding New Orleans is contagious. That is evident in the growth of CIPANOLA. Six fellows participated in the ’08 trip; this year 16 fellows and one honorary fellow (a Johnson School student) made the trek to Louisiana. Nine were first year fellows, seven were second years, and nearly half were international. Many participants felt that the diversity of the group enriched their experience.
Considerable thought went into the planning of this year’s trip. In addition to organizing logistics (transportation, food and lodging for seventeen people), the group took pains to stay focused on their long-term goals for CIPA-NOLA: expanding the overall experience through an emphasis on structured reflection and interaction with local service providers and policymakers, and assuring the future of the program.
They decided to continue the partnership they had established last year with St. Bernard Project (SBP), a New Orleans-based nonprofit group that works primarily in the Lower Ninth Ward, arguably the area hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina. SBP has a documented history of success, assisting more than 200 families since its inception in August of 2006.
CIPA-NOLA was assigned to two different rebuilding efforts during their stay. A small group worked on plastering and sanding a house occupied by a single mother and her children. A larger group of fellows worked on a gentleman’s house that was in the earlier stages of rebuilding; it had recently been gutted and the group was tasked with scrubbing every piece of wood in the house with a wire brush and treating it for mold.
“People took the work seriously,” says Skinner. “The whole of St. Bernard’s Parish was under 14 feet of water during Katrina. That’s why the mold situation is so dangerous.”
Fellows bonded with each other during their service trip to New Orleans. Back row (l to r): Jesse McCree, Jultin Villere, Sam Peprah, Sergio Oliva, Sara Rudow, and Shailesh Kumar. Front row: Amanda Quemore, Jessica Dillon, Maryam Jillani, Sobia Nusrat, Elvira Omondi, and Satoski Nakamura.
“It’s going to take decades for the city to get back to where it was before — not years — decades,” Villere says. “Still,” says Rudow, “there has been noticeable progress since last year. On the main street, about half of the buildings have been repopulated with business. That’s just in the main area — that’s not true of the side streets.”
While the rebuilding projects consumed the majority of their time in New Orleans, the fellows took several side trips. “This year we decided we wanted to emphasize service learning — combining the hands-on rebuilding work with self-reflection, group reflection, and professional development,” said Rudow.
The group toured several nonprofits including the Community Center of St. Bernard and the New Orleans Musician’s Clinic. The Community Center serves a vital role in the Parish, but is desperately in need of resources if it is to survive. The Musician’s Clinic provides free health care to musicians in the city; they currently have a grant that is sustaining them but do not know what they will do when it runs out.
“CIPA students are always asking insightful policy questions — they’re thinking about programmatic issues, strategic plans, and long-term implications,” Skinner explains. “Being able to meet with the directors of these nonprofits and discuss the challenges associated with running them, added a rich new dimension to the CIPANOLA experience.”
“One of the things that we did, which was almost the best part of the trip,” she continues, “was to get together at the end of each day and to discuss the highs and the lows. Verbalizing our own feelings and hearing others share theirs helped us process the experience. It also helped us bond as a group.”
The Future of CIPA-NOLA
Most graduating fellows are focused on the job search during spring semester. But for Rudow, Skinner and Villere, assuring the longevity of CIPANOLA is of more immediate concern. “We wanted to do something that was sustainable here,” says Rudow.
“As leaders, we have been very focused on the long-term aspect of this program — making it an institution within CIPA,” adds Villere. They hope that they can incorporate alumni into the program in the future — and that they themselves can participate in the trips to come.
The creation of CIPA-NOLA was organic, but the threesome has designed a more traditional board for the future. They held elections in late April and the positions were all filled by first year fellows. The leaders who will guide CIPA-NOLA in the coming year are: Co-Chairs: Jesse McCree and Keiko Nakamura; Outreach Coordinator: Jessica Dillon; Treasurer: Amanda Quemore and Secretary: Michaela Stewart. Rudow, Skinner and Villere are elated that the passion they feel for New Orleans has been passed on to a new class of fellows. “It has been our highest honor serving CIPA-NOLA, and it has been one of our greatest experiences here at Cornell,” says Rudow. “We want future classes to be able to enjoy it as much as we have.”
“The first-years who came on the trip this year didn’t have a lot of expectations about what would happen. They just thought it would be a good thing to do over break. But they came away with a commitment to the city. That’s the power of New Orleans right there,” says Villere. “I knew these people would be passionate about it afterwards. The city hooks you.” Newly elected CIPA-NOLA Co-Chair Jesse McCree has certainly felt the power of New Orleans. “This is what struck me about the trip,” he says, “If another storm hit New Orleans in ten or twenty years and wiped away the hard work we did (as well as wiped away the hard work The St. Bernard Project has done over the last few years), would those efforts be in vain? I asked the group this question, and the answer was a resounding ‘NO.’ A group of students served with unity of purpose, building each other up as they built a home. They were fellow laborers who looked outwardly instead of asking, ‘How does this help me?’ They immersed themselves in selfless service, and as a result, no amount of flood waters can wash away that kind of human commitment.” CIPA-NOLA appears to be in good hands for the future.
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