Emergency Communities was a volunteer organization which formed after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. It provided meals and other relief to residents and emergency responders, first in

Mississippi Mississippi () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States, bordered to the north by Tennessee; to the east by Alabama; to the south by the Gulf of Mexico; to the southwest by Louisiana; and to the northwest by Arkansas. Mis ...

, then in

Louisiana Louisiana , group=pronunciation (French: ''La Louisiane'') is a U.S. state, state in the Deep South and South Central United States, South Central regions of the United States. It is the List of U.S. states and territories by area, 20th-smal ...

. Emergency Communities ran sites in St. Bernard Parish, Plaquemines Parish, and Orleans Parish's Lower Ninth Ward, and then closed its doors on Thanksgiving of 2007. Nonprofit organization lowernine.org took the reins with regard to Emergency Communities' rebuild work, and continues to work on Eldorado Street rebuilding homes for residents of this devastated community. As of June 2009, lowernine.org has rebuilt twenty homes, in addition to working on hundreds of projects large and small across the community. Emergency Communities began with assistance from the International Humanities Center, which provided 501 3) fiscal sponsorship. Many key Emergency Communities volunteers met at the

New Waveland Cafe & Clinic The New Waveland Café and New Waveland Clinic together formed a disaster response center consisting of a combination café, soup kitchen, medical clinic, donation center, and market, that operated free of charge from September 5 to December 1 ...

in Waveland, Mississippi. This cafe provided meals, medical services and free goods for local residents. On 1 December 2005, the café closed its location, which was located in the parking lot of Fred's Department Store on

U.S. Route 90 U.S. Route 90 or U.S. Highway 90 (US 90) is an east–west major United States highway in the Southern United States. Despite the "0" in its route number, US 90 never was a full coast-to-coast route. With the exception of a short-lived ...

in Waveland. In November, Emergency Communities was incorporated. By 12 December the group had begun serving meals in a parking lot in

Arabi Arabi may refer to: *Ibn Arabi (1165–1240), early medieval Muslim mystic and philosopher *Arabi (sheep) *Arabi, Iran (disambiguation), villages in Iran *Arabi, Ethiopia * Arabi, Georgia, United States *Ahmed ‘Urabi, a 19th-century Egyptian rebe ...

, Louisiana, just outside

New Orleans New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans

This operation, dubbed the Made With Love Café, continued through June 2006. It provided up to 1,400 meals per day to government workers, relief workers and returning residents in and around St. Bernard Parish, the

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of Parish (administrative division), administrative parish used for Local government in England, local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below district ...

where the café was located. The site, formerly an off-track betting parlor, became recognizable by its large tents and

geodesic dome A geodesic dome is a hemispherical thin-shell structure (lattice-shell) based on a geodesic polyhedron. The triangular elements of the dome are structurally rigid and distribute the structural stress throughout the structure, making geodesic ...

. Over the course of its two years, Emergency Communities' sites hosted over 4,000 unique volunteers, including approximately 300 from

AmeriCorps AmeriCorps (officially the Corporation for National and Community Service or CNCS) is an independent agency of the United States government that engages more than five million Americans in service through a variety of stipended volunteer work pro ...

/ NCCC or others supported by grants from the

Corporation for National and Community Service AmeriCorps (officially the Corporation for National and Community Service or CNCS) is an independent agency of the United States government that engages more than five million Americans in service through a variety of stipended volunteer work pro ...

. The organization also raised over $10 million in donations for the relief effort, including from

Oxfam Oxfam is a British-founded confederation of 21 independent charitable organizations focusing on the alleviation of global poverty, founded in 1942 and led by Oxfam International. History Founded at 17 Broad Street, Oxford, as the Oxford Co ...

, the

Red Cross The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is a Humanitarianism, humanitarian movement with approximately 97 million Volunteering, volunteers, members and staff worldwide. It was founded to protect human life and health, to ensure re ...

, the

United Way United Way is an international network of over 1,800 local nonprofit organization, nonprofit fundraising affiliates. United Way was the largest nonprofit organization in the United States by donations from the public, prior to 2016. United Way o ...

, and hundreds of individuals across the country. Its major corporate sponsors included

Sanderson Farms Sanderson Farms is an American poultry producer which is based in Laurel, Mississippi. It is the third largest poultry producer in the United States and produces 13.65 million chickens per week. On July 22, 2022, it merged with Wayne Farms to fo ...

Chicken,

Organic Valley Organic Valley (OV) is an organic food brand and independent cooperative of organic farmers based in La Farge, Wisconsin, United States. Founded in 1988, Organic Valley is the nation’s largest farmer-owned organic cooperative and one of the w ...

, and

Domino Sugar Domino Foods, Inc. (also known as DFI and formerly known as W. & F.C. Havemeyer Company, Havemeyer, Townsend & Co. Refinery, and Domino Sugar) is a privately held sugar marketing and sales company based in Yonkers, New York, United States, that ...

. Together, its volunteers served over 350,000 meals to over 50,000 unique residents, and gutted and helped rebuild hundreds of homes. Among the additional services it provided over this period were laundry, daycare, food, clothing and household goods distribution, naturopathic healthcare, including massage and therapy, and warm, welcoming places to recover from the trauma of the storm. On 1 June 2006, Emergency Communities shut down its outdoor operation in St. Bernard Parish. As part of its exit strategy the nonprofit Community Center of St Bernard in Arabi, was founded. Using its Community Connections Model, the center currently helps more than 5,300 clients every year receive basic resources like food, clothes, legal aid, basic medical care, computer classes, financial literacy programs, senior citizen employment training, income tax preparation, information and referrals, and much more. On the same date, Emergency Communities served its first meal at a new location in Buras, Louisiana. On June 30, 2007, Emergency Communities closed the Y-Cafe in Buras and redeployed its resources to the Ninth Ward in New Orleans. A new organization, People for Plaquemines, carried on the mission of rebuilding lower Plaquemines Parish. Emergency Communities no longer accepts volunteers on the Gulf Coast. However, its sister organization, lowernine.org, is continuing the work of rebuilding in the Lower Ninth Ward. {{clear

References

External links

Coverage of the Made With Love Café during the holidays immediately after Katrina
by

Mark Miremont Mark Miremont is an American artist who works in photography, experimental film, music video and aphoristic writing. Early life and education Mark Miremont was born in Madrid, Spain and studied philosophy at UCLA & Harvard. His first experi ...

Emergency Communities
- This site is down! * Emergency Communities on Wikibooks
A Healthy Dose of Anarchy: After Katrina, nontraditional, decentralized relief steps in where big government and big charity failed - Reason Magazine, December 2006

Columbia College Article
*

Community center of st bernard {{no footnotes, date=October 2008 The Community Center of St Bernard (CCSTB) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization located in Arabi, Louisiana, in St Bernard Parish near New Orleans. The Community Center was founded in 2006 to serve local resident ...

* http://ccstb.org/
People For Plaquemines
Non-profit organizations based in the New Orleans metropolitan area History of Mississippi Non-profit organizations based in Louisiana St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana Hurricane Katrina disaster relief

See also

References

External links