Community Development

Mardi Gras Service Corps is launched in New Orleans with Ford support

NEW YORK, 28 February 2006 — Rebuilding efforts in New Orleans and vicinity are getting a boost from Mardi Gras visitors who are taking part in an enterprising program that connects tourists with volunteer projects they can take part in.

The program, run by the Ashé Cultural Arts Center, is supported in part by a grant from the Ford Foundation. About 3,000 volunteers have already joined the "Mardi Gras Service Corps." They are helping neighborhood organizations and local residents with work like cleaning, removing debris, installing drywall and painting.

Under the program, the volunteers are focusing on the communities of Central City, Gert Town, Gentilly, Pontchartrain Park, and the Holy Cross neighborhood. Organizers are recruiting additional volunteers, particularly college students on spring break, business visitors, and tourists. Beyond house repairs, the volunteers are helping out at child-care centers and working in local schools and churches.

A $220,000 Ford Foundation grant to Efforts of Grace Inc., a New Orleans nonprofit organization that runs the Ashé Cultural Arts Center, provides partial funding for the program. The grant also helped the organization rebuild its organizational capacity in the immediate aftermath of the hurricane, and is supporting its efforts to engage local artists and cultural leaders in longer-term rebuilding efforts.

Ford has committed $12 million to support long-term recovery efforts in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, with particular focus on the most disadvantaged communities. Grants are designed to help ensure that low-income families are empowered to be active participants in the rebuilding of homes, small businesses and neighborhoods. The foundation's long-standing commitment to inclusiveness and racial equity is an important element of its work in helping rebuild in the Gulf states.

The foundation's support of the Ashé Cultural Arts Center reflects a central goal of its Katrina funding: to encourage neighborhood revitalization by giving grassroots groups the resources and training needed to connect with one another, collaborate on issues of redevelopment, and engage successfully with government and private sector development efforts.

More information on Ford Foundation Support to the Gulf Coast

The Ford Foundation is an independent, nonprofit grant-making organization. For more than half a century it has been a resource for innovative people and institutions worldwide, guided by its goals of strengthening democratic values, reducing poverty and injustice, promoting international cooperation and advancing human achievement. With headquarters in New York, the foundation has offices in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Latin America, and Russia.