Way to build stewardship is to bolster discipleship Sacred Heart Brothers’ schools unite for a caus

The temperature reached the high 80s by 10 a.m., yet students and adult volunteers were working in the heat scraping paint, pulling out old nails and repainting the interior of a house in Gentilly, while another 40 were doing similar tasks at three other houses nearby.
   Who were these volunteers? Twenty students from Brother Martin High School and  counterparts from other schools operated by the Brothers of the Sacred Heart – Bishop Guertin High in New Hampshire; St. Joseph High in Metuchen, New Jersey; St. Stanislaus in Mississippi and Catholic High in Baton Rouge – were completing a joint service project organized by Tom Baier, Brother Martin’s director of campus ministry.
Need still remains
   Because the need to rebuild houses remains in New Orleans even now, nine years after Hurricane Katrina, Baier thought this would be an appropriate project to celebrate the July 1 unification of the former three provinces – New Orleans, New England and New York – of the Brothers of the Sacred Heart into one new entity called the Province of the United States.
   “We wanted to do something, but thought it would be neat to do service work with the three combined provinces to help rebuild New Orleans,” Baier said. “You put 20 kids on a back wall and you get it in shape in a day (he said about scraping paint).”
   Baier wanted locations close to Brother Martin since he notices how New Orleans hasn’t yet fully recovered when he drives to work every day. He arranged 70 work slots at four sites near Brother Martin and in Bywater with the nonprofit St. Bernard Project during the first week of July. “And we could have had more.”
   “You go back a few blocks from Elysian Fields and you see all the homes not rebuilt,” Baier said. “Just in our own neighborhood, there is plenty of work to do.”
Motivated to help
   Coming from several geographic areas of the United States, the high school students had a singular motivation in mind – to help others.
   “I live in New Orleans (Lakeview) but attend St. Stanislaus, and I want to see my city come back,” rising senior Johnny Contreras, 17, said.  He jumped at the idea of this service project when he heard about it at school and mentioned that he’s heard so many stories about returning to New Orleans after Katrina from co-workers at a local Latin restaurant. “There is still a lot to do. I want to see the whole city rebuilt, not just part of it.”
   While individual students had come to New Orleans to do service work previously, this was the first time a concerted effort was made by students of different Sacred Heart schools, Baier said.
   Thirteen families of Brother Martin students served as hosts for the out-of-town students and families.
   “I think the giving back to the community part,” New Orleans parent Donna Blanchard said was an important element of this type of service work. “They also learned how to work well with other people. They see the need.”
A bonding experience
   While Brother Martin has a service-learning component of required service hours, not all Sacred Heart schools follow suit. So, the young adults from other states volunteered to work here.
   “Up north, we never had a national disaster to speak of like this,” said Ethan Michaud, 17, a rising senior at Brother Guertin High School. “You see all these things in the news, but until you can come down here and see it, you don’t really understand. This reinforces all that we have heard and learned about it.
   “We wanted to make a difference. We know we’re only here for six days, and you can’t build a house in that time, but every little bit helps. You help a family get one step closer to getting in their home. We knew we wouldn’t change the world, but we could do our part to help a family get back home.”
   Bishop Guertin is a coed Catholic school, so several young women were working alongside their male counterparts.
   “You realize how hard the hurricane hit the state, how it impacted people’s lives and how long the recovery project has taken to come to a close,” said Mikayla Elliott, 17, of Bishop Guertin. “I wanted to just help the community. I knew it would be a good thing to make people’s lives better.”
   Christine Bordelon can be reached at cbordelon@clarionherald.org.