• National Building Museum Honors Musicians' Village Founders
• NOAHH Names New Board Members for 2010
• Disney's Give a Day Get a Day with NOAHH
• 300 Homes Built Post-Katrina By NOAHH
• Entergy Innovation Center Opens in Upper Ninth Ward
• NOAHH and Jazz Fest Celebrate Raisin the Roof
• Shell and NOAHH Raise Walls on Fifth Duplex
• Tru Value Donates 17 Freightliners of Supplies to NOAHH
• Hornets Begin 13th, 14th and 15th Hoops for Homes in New Orleans East
• St. Paul's Class of 1977 Dedicates Habitat Home
• Eleven Homes Dedicated With Baptist Crossroads
• 3,500 Students Volunteer with NOAHH
• NOAHH Appoints New Board Members
• NOAHH Completes 84 Homes in 2008
• Texas Roadhouse and TriMark SS Kemp Dedicate MV Homes  [PDF: 52 KB - Nov 13, 2008]
• New Orleans Area Habitat for Humanity Receives
• NOAHH's Third Anniversary Update
• Catholicos Visit Musicians' Village
• NOAHH Continues Through Second Anniversary of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita
• Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter Celebrate 1000th House in New Orleans
• Hornets and NOAHH back at work
• President Bush visits Musicians Village
• 30 Families receive keys to their new homes!!!
• Barack Obama visits Musicians Village
• Musicians Village House dedications
• President Bush letter to NOAHH
• Music is foundation to Rebuild New Orleans
• President Bush Visits the Musicians Village

3,500 Students Volunteer with NOAHH

New Orleans, LA, (February 16, 2009) – Over 3,500 students from over 100 schools across the country will travel to New Orleans for an alternative spring break experience with New Orleans Area Habitat for Humanity working on houses all throughout the greater New Orleans area.

“We are continually amazed by the response from students around the country, even three and a half years after Hurricane Katrina,” stated Jim Pate, Executive Director of NOAHH. “The sense of volunteerism that brings these students to our city is something that we’ve been seeing more clearly these past few years. Their contribution to our recovery has been enormous.”

As students pour into New Orleans to lend a helping hand, numbers at Habitat’s volunteer base camp, Camp Hope, have swelled proportionately. Along with volunteers from other organizations, Camp Hope has over 800 guests a night between March 9 and March 20, peaking at 982.

This year, students are expected from over 20 states, Washington, D.C., and other countries as well to work on their spring breaks in New Orleans—from Harvard Business School in Massachusetts to California State Long Beach in California, and from Tallahassee Community College in Florida to as far north as the University of Western Ontario in Canada.

Locally, Tulane University will send over 200 volunteers from various student organizations and other campus groups, and local high schools will send even more to give back to their community—Mount Carmel Academy alone sent over 200 volunteers. Internationally, students will come from as far away as the American School of The Hague in the Netherlands, and 225 students will come from Canada as well to help New Orleans Habitat build.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in the last five years the percentage of volunteers in America who were college students remained in the range of 30% (or about 15 million students per year). In Louisiana, 31% of volunteers were students in 2007, according to the Louisiana Department of Culture, Recreation, and Tourism, slightly above the national average.

The attraction to Louisiana, and the entire Gulf Coast, is attributed by the Corporation for National and Community Service’s Volunteering in America, a web site that tracks trends and statistics in volunteerism, to voluntourism. Voluntourism is defined as long distance travel with the intention of volunteering. As the report puts it, the Gulf Coast is “a hot spot for college alternative spring breaks.” Of the more than 600,000 volunteers that worked in Louisiana in 2007, 166,000 were from out-of-state, and of those, over 33,000 were students. Those students came from over 30 states and logged over 300,000 service hours. With this in mind, it’s no surprise that Louisiana ranks 5th in the nation in out-of-state volunteers (compared to their total number of volunteers).

While the trends seem to be holding steady around the nation, the allure of New Orleans as a voluntourist spot remains clear. The other top areas for voluntourism are all either popular tourist locations like Washington, D.C., or other hurricane-affected areas, where support from the U.S. population remains high. As a city that fits both criteria, New Orleans has earned a place in the hearts of tens of thousands of students who have chosen to take an alternative kind of vacation during their spring breaks.

New Orleans Area Habitat for Humanity, an independent affiliate of Habitat for Humanity International, is a 501(c) 3 non-profit organization. NOAHH builds new houses in partnership with sponsors, volunteers, communities, and homeowner families to eliminate poverty housing in the New Orleans area while serving as a catalyst to make decent shelter a matter of conscience and action. Since its inception in 1983 NOAHH has built over 300 new homes for low-income families in need of adequate shelter. NOAHH plans to continue to build homes in Orleans, Jefferson, St. Bernard, St. Charles and Plaquemines Parishes. www.habitat-nola.org