March 24, 2010 | Read Time: 2 minutes
New Orleans
On Tuesday afternoon, grant makers and nonprofit officials attending the Katrina @ 5: Partners in Philanthropy conference ventured out of the French Quarter hotel where the meeting is being held to see for themselves how the region is recovering from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
Participants could choose from among six site visits—four neighborhoods in New Orleans; the United Houma Nation, an American Indian tribe about an hour outside the city; and Bay St. Louis, Miss.
The Rev. Vien the Nguyen, pastor at Mary Queen of Viet Nam Catholic Church, was one of several community leaders who welcomed conference participants to New Orleans East.
Before Hurricane Katrina, the Vietnamese community in New Orleans East was like many Asian enclaves in the United States—it preferred to keep a low profile, Father Nguyen told the visitors.
“We have a saying that means, ‘It would be unfortunate if the government knows you,’” he said. “We would prefer that the government wouldn’t know us, so we were not involved in the overall working of the city at all.”
The city’s decision to locate a landfill for storm debris in New Orleans East changed all that, he said. The community’s fight to close the landfill was successful, and today activists are pushing for a site cleanup.
Mary Queen of Viet Nam has changed as well. The church founded a community-development corporation and set about creating the services residents needed to be able to return to the area, including a charter school and a health clinic.
The community-development group has also secured 28 acres of land and plans to break ground on an urban farm next spring to improve the local food system and provide economic opportunities for residents.
Said Father Nguyen: “What we have been aiming for as a community is how can we armor ourselves so that when something like Katrina happens again, we can get up and start running again.”
