With the exception of 2005, when Hurricane Katrina stole a couple of months of publishing time from us, Gambit Weekly each year honors a group of people for the contributions they have made to the city and the promise their career and community-minded paths hold for the future. This year's group, all under the age of 40, includes athletes, musicians, organizers, youth, educators, physicians and a host of others who once again prove that wisdom and good works aren't products of years but of passion and ambition.
Profiles by Frank Etheridge, Ian McNulty, Adam Norris and David Winkler-Schmit
Photos by Cheryl Gerber
Theresa Andersson, 35
Musician and Music Educator
When the Saints finally returned to the Superdome to host the Atlanta Falcons on Monday Night Football, it was a homecoming game in the truest sense, a day of celebration when local life paraded down Poydras Street. One of the pied pipers for this parade was Theresa Andersson, who grew up far away on a farm in Sweden.
"Of all the people they could have asked to perform and for them to ask me, it was such an honor," Andersson says of the invitation to play on Poydras Street that day.
Andersson first moved to New Orleans nearly 17 years ago with fellow Swedish transplant Anders Osborne. The two earned a contract with Sony Records after paying their dues with gigs in local bars. When the couple parted ways, Andersson opted to move to Nashville to try to break into the Music City's scene and "to find my own way, to find my own strength." During her time away, Andersson faced rejection by big-name labels but found her own sound, applying a rock edge to her violin. She also found out how much she missed New Orleans.
"The city has embraced me," Andersson says. "Being from another country, it feels really nice to feel so rooted here."
Andersson established more local roots when she married New Orleans native Arthur Mintz, drummer for acclaimed group World Leader Pretend. While Andersson is at work on another album for Basin Street Records and recently performed songs for a number of movie soundtracks, she and Mintz have moved into another area: music education.
With a group called the Betcha Can Cans, Andersson and Mintz perform music in schools statewide in a program to teach self-esteem. Next year, the project will expand to include local music history and heritage.
"A lot of the kids aren't aware of the amazing heritage they have here," she says. "It's nice to be able to share what I know about music, but it's nice because the experience educates me so much as well." -- Etheridge
Ashish Verma, 38 G
General Manager, Windsor Court Hotel
You could call it a field promotion. Hired in May 2005 as assistant general manager of the Windsor Court Hotel, Ashish Verma became general manager of the luxury hotel at a time when conditions in New Orleans were at their most martial and least accommodating.
But Verma had some unique experience with handling crises, having previously worked in hotel management in New York City during the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and the utility blackout there in 2003. Perhaps more important, Verma learned lessons instilled by his father, a general in India's army.
"He taught me the three C's in a crisis. Stay calm, use common sense and communicate, and that's what I did," he says.
Guests were safely evacuated under escort two days after Hurricane Katrina, and a day later the hotel was able to thwart would-be looters who tried to break in. When two five-story buildings across the street caught fire, collapsed and ignited trees and awnings around the Windsor Court, Verma and his staff organized bucket brigades to douse the flames with water from the hotel's pool.
After the initial crisis, Verma almost immediately shifted gears toward recovery and reopening. The official reopening came Nov. 1, 2005, but as early as mid-October last year, the hotel provided four floors of accommodations for President George Bush during his visit to the city.
"I knew it was important to demonstrate to the nation that major businesses were already back in New Orleans. It was vital for us to be open for the tourism business. That's the city's mainstay, and our team members were relying on us," he says, referring to the hotel's 300 employees.
The hotel's charitable activities since the storm include support for the public high school McDonough No. 35 and Habitat for Humanity. With the reopening of the New Orleans Grill and the return of the hotel's tea service, Verma reports the Windsor Court is fully back to normal. -- McNulty
James Perry, 31
Executive Director
Lucia Blacksher, 33
General Counsel
Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center
Anyone who has tried to find a place to live in New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina knows the process is no picnic, with higher prices and lower availability combining to make the market very tight. When discrimination enters the picture, however, it becomes unjust and illegal. That's where the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center (GNOFHAC) comes in.
This private, nonprofit civil rights organization was established in 1995 and is the only one of its kind in Louisiana that combines both educational outreach about fair housing rights and investigation of discrimination complaints.
At the helm are executive director James Perry and general counsel Lucia Blacksher. In the aftermath of the storm, they were the only staff the GNOFHAC had left as countless thousands of people from the region went on a desperate search for housing across the state. Now staff is back up to six people, but what also is climbing is the number of complaints flowing back to the GNOFHAC from across the state and cases the agency has taken up in response to municipal policies floated since the storm.
The most high-profile recent fights center on zoning issues such as moratoriums on multi-family housing and ordinances like one brought up in St. Bernard Parish that would allow landlords to rent only to blood relatives.
Perry says the biggest change since last year's storms is that discrimination in the housing market is much more brazen than before.
"What we're seeing is people stating their intent to discriminate," he says. "We even saw it on Web sites designed to help Katrina victims find housing. We'd see ads that would literally say, 'We're not racist, but whites only.'"
Contributing to the tide of cases is a greater willingness of people who believe they've been discriminated against to report it, spurred by the scarcity of housing options and their desperation to find a home.
"Let's say you have someone who in the past might have just accepted it as the way it is and moved on to the next apartment," says Perry. "Now, there is no next apartment for them. They're more inclined to call us because they don't have other options."
Both Perry and Blacksher credit the direction of their careers in part to the influence of their parents. Perry's father was a civil rights activist in the Birmingham area beginning in the 1960s, and Blacksher's father is a pioneering civil rights attorney in Alabama who works on desegregation and voting rights cases. Blacksher interned with the GNOFHAC while in Loyola Law School, and after earning her degree went to work as a civil rights attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C.
"But all I could think about was coming back," she says. So when the general counsel job at the GNOFHAC opened up in 2004, she took it.
Perry began his career with the Preservation Resource Center, helping revitalize vacant properties and later started the first fair housing program in southern Mississippi. But he too yearned to come back home. He got his chance in January 2005, when the GNOFHAC's director position came up. -- McNulty
Corey Walsh, 36
Founder, Real Life Nutrition Counseling
The words "anxiety" and "depression" have been all too familiar companions for people in the New Orleans area living through the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. To dieticians like Corey Walsh, that can mean serious trouble because anxiety and depression are common triggers for people suffering from eating disorders.
"For a lot of people who need care, just giving them a meal plan isn't going to work because these disorders aren't just about food and weight," Walsh says. Instead, the problems can spring from a web of emotional and psychological issues that often take root during the developmental teenage years.
That makes early intervention key to preventing disorders or treating them before they can grow into life-threatening conditions. To this end, Walsh earlier this year shifted her professional focus to devote all her energies to Real Life Nutrition Counseling, the outpatient counseling practice she formed in 2001 while she also worked at other facilities. A new emphasis for Real Life Nutrition is programs for schools that emphasize proper nutrition and address issues of body image. The firm also is pursuing nutrition programs for school athletics programs for both teams and individual students.
A New Orleans native, Walsh originally studied radio production in college in preparation for a music-oriented career, but she soon discovered her passion for working with nutrition and eating disorders. Back home after school, she worked in outpatient and inpatient settings with some of the nation's premiere eating disorder specialists. Working with her clients and as a field consultant for psychiatric practices, she honed her expertise as a nutrition therapist promoting physical and emotional wellness in children and adults.
"It comes down to helping people make peace with food so they use it for fuel and for pleasure, too, but not as an emotional outlet," Walsh says. -- McNulty
Esteban Gershanik, 31
Physician
As the evacuation of New Orleans was in full gear following Hurricane Katrina, Esteban Gershanik was racing toward the city.
A doctor of internal medicine and pediatrics, Gershanik had been out of town before the storm struck, but he knew his services would be needed back home. He cared for ill and injured people stuck on the Causeway and at the airport, but a different sort of challenge awaited him when he made it to the post-disaster health-care headquarters in Baton Rouge.
"It was complete chaos, people were hopping in ambulances with no idea where they were going or what was going on," Gershanik says.
So he joined the effort to help organize operations, working with teams to get correct information on volunteer medical personnel and dispatch them where they were most needed. He also helped set up clinics for everything from vaccinations to mental health checkups for EMS staff working long hours in the disaster area.
Gershanik grew up in New Orleans, earned his bachelor's degree at Emory University in Atlanta and returned home to attend Tulane University, where he earned his medical degree and a master's degree in public health with a concentration on health systems management. Now he is in the third year of his medical residency at Tulane.
"My long-term goal is to be part of changing the health-care system," he says. "It seems inefficient, and I think anyone who has interacted with the system has experienced that, whether dealing with health insurance, not having insurance at all or the waste of duplicated services."
Gershanik believes there is an opportunity to make changes in the redesign of health-care delivery spurred by the hurricane. Timing is crucial, he says, since the population surge from Baby Boomers is beginning to draw more heavily on health-care services. "We need to do something to improve our system now before we're in serious trouble," he says. -- McNulty
Photo courtesy World War II Museum |
Martin Morgan, 37
Director of Research, National World War II Museum
Fans lined up to meet Hollywood movie stars who attended a recent event at the National World War II Museum, but local veterans of the battle of Iwo Jima who were honored that day also were asked for their autographs by young admirers. Martin Morgan, director of research at the downtown museum, says that kind of connection between generations is an example of why the institution's work is important.
"We're here to teach the story of the teamwork, the sacrifice and the spirit of the people who won the war," he says. "There has to be a means of telling this story so that the legacy and lessons will remain. We can't allow this to pass into the realm of myth and legend."
The museum is in the midst of a $300 million expansion to greatly increase its scope from its original inception as the National D-Day Museum, and Morgan plays a key role in the research and acquisition of artifacts for its ever-growing exhibits.
Most recently, his work brought home the museum's largest artifact to date, a vintage C-47 American cargo plane that carried paratroopers during D-Day operations. Morgan found the aircraft for sale on eBay and was instrumental in its purchase and restoration.
The son of a career Army officer, Morgan was born on a military post and developed an early interest in history. He moved to New Orleans in 1998 to work at a law firm and became a volunteer for the nascent museum project. Here he got to know the museum's prime mover, the late historian Stephen Ambrose, who Morgan credits as his mentor.
Morgan joined the museum staff in 2000 and has since written the nonfiction book Down To Earth about a paratrooper unit during the war. He also has served as an advisor and expert source for numerous television documentaries. -- McNulty
Photo by Mae Lizama |
Meredith Graf, 12
Artist and Student
He asked her to draw a garbage can. Jim McQueen, a nationally renowned illustrator, already had viewed examples of then-11-year-old Meredith Graf's drawings, and now he wanted see her at work. The result was a garbage can, but one that revealed promise. McQueen gave Graf's dad a list of art supplies and told him to bring her by the next day for her first lesson.
Jim McQueen had never taken on a student. But he realized the young girl, who he met in Hattiesburg, Miss., during her family's evacuation, wasn't just a kid fooling around; she was a prodigy. Her parents, Tom and Michelle, had known for a while -- likely as early as when Graf was 4 and proclaimed, "I am an artist."
Like so many artists, the storm affected Graf, but she wasn't overwhelmed by the destruction or the despair. When she watched President George Bush give his speech in front of St. Louis Cathedral, she saw the darkness, but she also found hope. She felt compelled to share her vision, giving her friends, family and strangers solace that the city would rebuild "because of all the help New Orleans would get from the president and others."
The result was Helping Hands, two painstakingly rendered drawings of the president's hands. Bush responded by sending her a care package of memorabilia and a kind note thanking her for the gift.
Graf hasn't let age prevent her from advancing her talent. When she found out the United States Congress sponsored an art contest, she entered, although it was only for high school students. Her effort, an oil painting of the state flag and a representation of Rep. Bobby Jindal's congressional district, so impressed the congressman that he had the painting hung in Congress.
Graf is the youngest person to ever receive this honor.
Twelve-year-old Graf continues her lessons with McQueen, traveling to Hattiesburg on the weekends. She says she already has put more than four hours into her newest project, a portrait of President Bush, which she has been invited to present to him in the Oval Office. -- Winkler-Schmit
Orlando Watkins, 35
Vice President of Programs, Greater New Orleans Foundation
When foundations, philanthropists and others want to make a monetary contribution to help New Orleans rebuild from Hurricane Katrina, many of them start by contacting Orlando Watkins, vice president of programs for the Greater New Orleans Foundation (GNOF).
"In the post-Katrina world, people are looking for a trusted counsel to help guide their donations, and that's the role of the foundation," says Watkins, who joined the nonprofit a month after Katrina. "I get the calls from people saying, 'We want to help, so help us get to the committed and effective organizations out there.'"
Watkins comes to the job with extensive experience in youth development programs and capacity-building roles for nonprofits, most recently as director the Louisiana Serve Commission.
He had an early start in the field. While still a student at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Watkins helped found a private school aimed at closing the achievement gap for African-American children. He later used the proceeds from a prestigious Echoing Green fellowship to establish a mentoring program for African-American students called Inspiring Careers in Engineering, Mathematics and Science, which is run by NASA and the Georgia Institute of Technology.
More recently, he joined the board of the Urban League in New Orleans as part of a wave of new leaders working to revitalize the local organization, and he is a founding member of New Schools for New Orleans, a nonprofit formed in March to support the city's new charter schools. He also is a board member of City Year Louisiana, a statewide youth service organization that began last year in Baton Rouge and is now beginning its pilot program for New Orleans.
"What we do is encourage and sustain civic participation, and we think it's a great program for this rebuilding community," he says. -- McNulty
Erin Romney, 27
Founder, Pilates Center
The prospect of caring for sea creatures at the Aquarium of the Americas originally drew Erin Romney to New Orleans five years ago, but it turns out she found her real niche helping people take better care of themselves. Along the way, she built a fast-growing health, fitness and wellness business at her Pilates Center on Magazine Street.
A native of Salt Lake City, Utah, Romney was a competitive swimmer in college when she first discovered the therapeutic benefits of Pilates, a method of exercise and physical movement designed to stretch, strengthen and balance the body. After graduating with a biology/chemistry degree, she headed to New Orleans with plans to work at the aquarium. When she got here, however, she discovered there was a budding interest in Pilates here and went to work as an instructor at hospitals, private clubs, studios and community centers. Before long, she realized that instead of keeping pace with this circuit of venues, her client base was strong enough to start her own business.
"I was doing different things at different places and seeing a lot of different groups of clients," Romney says. "I wanted to bring that all together in one place and create my own environment."
Romney also is certified in gyrotonics, a unique system of equipment and exercises that incorporates movement principles from yoga, dance, gymnastics, swimming and tai chi.
After two years in business, the Pilates Center is moving a few blocks down Magazine Street. With nearly twice as much space as before, Romney is creating an alternative therapy center with therapist-led mediation and stress-therapy classes, acupuncture, massage, yoga, spinning, Pilates and a retail center.
When Romney carves out time for herself, she often heads to the aquarium, the place that drew her to New Orleans in the first place, where she volunteers as a diver to care for sea creatures and their habitats. -- McNulty
Craig Stewart, 30
Motivational Speaker and Owner, Creative Motivational Services
When Craig Stewart speaks, you get the feeling the guy's on a mission, and he is. Stewart, a motivational speaker, believes he not only has to inspire New Orleans workers to perform their best but also to let corporations know the city is business-friendly.
"I want to change the mindset of how New Orleans is viewed," Stewart says. "I want people to say, 'Hey, we can do business here.' and 'We can train our people' so we can be globally efficient, not just good enough for New Orleans, but good enough for the world.' I know that it's going to take some time, but I'm willing to put in that time."
When it comes to getting what he wants, the New Orleans native is indefatigable. In 1998, Stewart was working at the Intercontinental Hotel, serving in the Marine Corps Reserves, and taking classes at Delgado Community College. The hotel brought in a motivational speaker, Dr. Michael Grant, to talk about employee morale. A man sitting next to Stewart kept nudging him throughout the presentation, whispering, "Hey, Craig, you said that the day before."
Afterwards, Stewart approached Grant, asking him how he became a motivational speaker. Grant took Stewart under his wing and for the next four years, free of charge, Stewart presented more than 1,000 hours of speeches to New Orleans public school students -- urging them to never give up on their dreams. He didn't just lecture the kids, he conducted extended question-and-answer sessions and discussed how they could take advantage of their "God-given talents."
Nowadays, Stewart travels the country presenting workshops on improving employee morale and getting workers directly involved in improving a business. It's all about developing pride, says Stewart, who also works as an employee trainer for Job 1 of New Orleans. There he teaches work ethics, interviewing skills and resume writing.
"I'm finding these different jewels in people and bringing them to light." -- Winkler-Schmit
Leonard Wiggins, 27
Engineer and Leader of Young Leadership Council's Neighborhood Renaissance Project
At his day job at Lockheed Martin's Michoud Facility, engineer Leonard Wiggins helps build components that lift NASA space shuttles into the heavens. His volunteer work, however, is much closer to the ground, helping teenagers and now a neighborhood get back on its feet.
Wiggins, a native of Suffolk, Va., moved to New Orleans for the Michoud job after earning a master's degree in mechanical engineering from Virginia Tech. He quickly became involved with the professional volunteer organization the Young Leadership Council (YLC) and took on his first project as a basketball coach for its youth recreational program, working with kids from the B.W. Cooper public housing development.
"I liked it because there was a lot more going than basketball," he says. "It really became more like a mentoring program; you had to earn the respect and the trust of the kids."
He soon became co-leader of the YLC's entire recreation project. Hurricane Katrina suspended that work. Wiggins was dedicated to working for the city's recovery, however, and in 2006 was named vice president of projects for the YLC with a mandate to concentrate the group's energies on one neighborhood. This became the YLC's Neighborhood Renaissance Project, and the first area selected for attention was Central City. The project's aim is to help revitalize one neighborhood at a time with community service, enrichment programs and beautification efforts while developing local leaders for sustainable improvement. The work so far has included area cleanups, door-to-door crime surveys and work in local schools that have reopened so far.
Wiggins' own dream for the future is to open an affordable, private and nonreligious school aimed at African-American boys.
"It's a struggle for young African-American males, and I hope a school like the one I have in mind could increase their opportunities and hopefully deter some of the negative things that get so much attention now," he says. -- McNulty
Photo courtesy NBA Photos |
David West, 26
Power Forward, New Orleans Hornets
David West strives for improvement -- in his career and in the community where he lives. The strides he's made professionally are well documented.
The 6-foot-9 Hornets power forward experienced a roundball renaissance during the 2005-06 season. After two years of tentative play in a reserve role, he emerged as the team's leading scorer and rebounder and was runner-up in the voting for the NBA's most improved player.
The former first-round draft pick from Xavier (Ohio) University is the only current Hornet who played for the team when it was based in New Orleans. Oklahoma City has served as the Hornets' temporary home since Katrina. West calls New Orleans a "special place" where the need to reach out to those less fortunate has never been greater.
"As a black American, and seeing the conditions of other black Americans in New Orleans, especially those who were affected by Katrina, I feel I have a responsibility to help," West says.
Last March, West and his teammates donated food and clothing to children in St. Bernard Parish. He also visited shelters and FEMA trailer parks where he signed autographs, posed for pictures and spent time with Katrina evacuees. West says he especially relishes the interaction with young fans.
"There's always a chance to touch kids," West says. "You never know what shaking hands or saying a couple of words of encouragement can do to change or help."
In anticipation of their full-scale return to New Orleans for the 2007-08 season, the Hornets held a portion of training camp in the Crescent City this fall. West says it provided a chance to get reacquainted with a city that was his home for two years. He's looking forward to being back in New Orleans, where his work on his game and in his community will continue.
"We're in a fortunate situation," West says of NBA players. "You shouldn't have to be begged or seduced into helping people." -- Norris
Photo courtesy NBA Photos |
Mimi Rice, 34
Publicist, Emeril's Homebase
If you're wondering just how much of an impact the popularity and celebrity of chef Emeril Lagasse can have on efforts to rebuild New Orleans, keep this number in mind: $2.5 million.
That's how much the Emeril Lagasse Foundation, which supports children's causes, raised in one night last month with the Carnivale du Vin fundraiser. While Lagasse might be the public face of such high-profile fundraisers, Mimi Rice is the person who organizes and orchestrates events for the Emeril empire.
"[Lagasse] has a national audience through his appearances on Good Morning America and the Food Network," Rice says. "In the past year since Katrina, we've really tried to gear that programming toward helping with the image of New Orleans, showcasing local restaurants and cuisine and discussing the best things about New Orleans."
A resident of Lakeview before Katrina, Rice lost all her possessions in the flood. The storm forced Rice, a native of Ocean Springs, Miss., and graduate from Loyola University, to work for months out of the Food Network offices in New York City, where she had lived for five years after college and had worked as a publicist for former CNN fashion analyst Elsa Klensch. Yet, she says her job -- which includes publicity for Lagasse and the company's nine restaurants across the country, its line of cookware, cookbooks and food products -- hasn't slowed down at all over the past year. On top of those duties, Rice also has worked tirelessly in her volunteer role with the New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau Public Relations Hospitality Coalition.
"We're working to spread the positive news coming out of the city," Rice says of the coalition, which consists of 25 local public relations professionals and has created a national advertising campaign that features local figures such as Lagasse. "We're working to let people across the country know that we need their support, that we want them to come enjoy New Orleans again. We feel we've really made a difference." -- Etheridge
Aaron Wolfson, 35
Peter Menge, 35
Co-founders, Savvy Gourmet
Party hosts know the gravitational pull of one particular room in the house: yes, everyone seems to end up in the kitchen. After Hurricane Katrina, the kitchen at Savvy Gourmet turned out to have the same kind of draw, thanks to the Uptown culinary center's rapidly evolving variety of programs and services.
The business has its roots in cooking classes that New Orleans native Aaron Wolfson held in his home beginning in 2001. He teamed up with Peter Menge, a former schoolmate, and they soon brought the classes into restaurant kitchens. This led to a far more ambitious plan to build a stand-alone destination combining cooking classes, a kitchen wares store and a catering operation. They had opened in a freshly renovated space on Magazine Street just a few weeks before Hurricane Katrina.
With their facility intact but their community shattered, Menge and Wolfson reopened Savvy Gourmet in the weeks after the storm as a place for people to gather and reconnect over food and drink. They branded these casual get-togethers "repatriation parties," and they signaled the start of a stream of new entrepreneurial and community-minded ideas from Savvy Gourmet.
"We realized the plan we'd been building for several years wasn't going to work right away in post-Katrina New Orleans, and the only way we'd survive was to throw ourselves into it and worry about the money later," says Wolfson, who also is a practicing psychologist. "Once we saw the extent of devastation, not just physically but emotionally in the community, we knew we had to just open our doors for people."
Responding to the scarcity of reopened restaurants and groceries, Savvy Gourmet temporarily shelved its cooking classes and began serving lunch and stocking produce and seafood from local purveyors.
"We just decided to open the kitchen as a restaurant," Menge says. "The next day, we had 33 people for lunch, then 40-something the day after that and then over 50 the following day."
They started inviting chefs whose restaurants were forced to close for guest stints in their own kitchen. One of them, Corbin Evans of Lulu's in the Garden, ended up being Savvy's full-time chef as a result. While the grocery sideline was discontinued as more stores opened, the dine-in and take-out restaurant is now a permanent part of Savvy Gourmet, serving lunch and Sunday brunch, even as more of the business' original concept has been introduced.
Cooking classes resumed in November 2005, again often with guest chefs invited to instruct. Savvy recently added a wine program, with classes and a retail wine section joining the kitchen wares shop. The latest project, called Savvy Kitchens, has Wolfson and Menge paired with Ed Novak of Artifice Studio, who designed the cabinetry in the store's high-profile kitchen.
"After the 20th time someone asked us, 'who did your kitchen?' we decided to go into kitchen design," says Wolfson.
Over the summer, around the time of their first anniversary, the Savvy crew launched a raft of culinary programs for children, including after-school enrichment programs and hands-on birthday parties.
Savvy also has hosted many fundraisers for local culinary icons who were devastated by the flood, including Creole soul food legend Leah Chase and the 101-year-old Angelo Brocato's Ice Cream. The company also has been an ardent supporter of the New Orleans Restaurant Renewal Fund, which raises money to help local restaurants reopen. Menge and Wolfson are helping plan a major fundraiser for the cause in the early spring with hospitality groups in New York. -- McNulty
Cat Malovic, 28
Ariya Martin, 31
Joanna Rosenthal, 26
The New Orleans Kid Camera Project
The New Orleans Kid Camera Project is about exposure -- in more ways than one. The grassroots program starts by putting cameras in the hands of local children to help tell the story of New Orleans neighborhoods post-Katrina through the eyes of its youngest citizens. At the same time, it introduces the children to a world of new possibilities. Its goal is to empower children through art and to help them find their voices through photography, writing and other creative outlets.
"Taking pictures of what they see and talking about them is a natural way for these children to express themselves. We just give them the tools to do it," says Joanna Rosenthal, who founded the project with Cat Malovic.
Rosenthal, a native of St. Louis, Mo., and Malovic, of Charlestown, S.C., both came to New Orleans to earn master's degrees in social work from Tulane University. After the storm, their fieldwork took them into the Ninth Ward to work with a local family.
"Schools were still closed and we noticed the four kids had nothing to do, so we started giving them disposable cameras," says Malovic.
The two developed the film for the children and started meeting with them on a regular basis to talk about their photos and what the images meant to them. They kept this up as an informal project until they met Ariya Martin, a photographer from Rochester, N.Y., who was in town as a volunteer gutting houses. On the eve of Martin's return back home, she learned of the budding camera project and decided to get involved. She held a fundraiser in New York and returned with better cameras and darkroom equipment. Martin has since made New Orleans her home and works as a photography professor at the University of New Orleans.
Along with fellow volunteers Eric Carr, Tara Malik and Ibby Caputo, they incorporated the Kid Camera Project, expanding the program and developing the Web site www.kidcameraproject.org to share the children's work with the world. Children's photos from the project have appeared at the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Contemporary Arts Center (CAC) and the Green Project as well as in gallery shows in other cities. The Kid Camera Project's Web site soon will feature short film clips made by the children and recordings of the children talking about their work and experiences.
From its origins with four children from one family, the project now works with young people in neighborhoods around the city and in St. Bernard Parish. During weekly meetings, the Kid Camera Project assembles groups of children and gives them a chance not only to show their work but also to share stories and impressions of their changing world. Along the way, they are helping cultivate creative perspectives and emotional coping skills that will help them for the rest of their lives.
"The children are also learning computer skills, working with photo programs, Web page design and all-around computer literacy," says Martin. "They're seeing how art and photography can be a career path. They're discovering new opportunities they never knew existed,"
Indeed, the writing work one of the children has done for the Kid Camera Project helped identify her as a student who could thrive at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts NOCCA. With the help of the project leaders, she was accepted and began 10th grade there this year. Other children involved with the project have received scholarships to attend summer art camp at the Contemporary Arts Center. The group now is at work on a possible traveling show of the Kid Camera Project for next summer. -- McNulty
Markeith Tero, 28
Big Chief, Trouble Nation Mardi Gras Indians
The joy and pride embodied in the distinctly New Orleans traditions of social aid and pleasure clubs and Mardi Gras Indians may seem to bubble up from the streets, but those groups' longevity always depends on one generation passing them on to the next. In the wake of Katrina, the responsibility to keep these fires burning is especially serious business to Big Chief Markeith Tero.
The New Orleans native is a founder of the Trouble Nation Mardi Gras Indians and member of the Distinguished Gentlemen Social Aid and Pleasure Club. His own introduction to the Mardi Gras Indian tradition came at age 11, and he learned to sew Indian beadwork at the side of the late, legendry Indian leader Allison "Tootie" Montana. He has performed far and wide, from France and Malaysia to Jazz Fest and local conventions, but it is his involvement with the younger generation that makes him a leader in his hometown.
"I'm just trying to give other people encouragement and make sure the kids know about all this, that they don't take it for granted and let it fade," says Tero.
Before the storm, he organized a youth version of a social aid and pleasure club at his old elementary school, with a civic mission to reduce litter and promote cleanliness on campus. Along the way, the students learned the spirited dances and traditions of the New Orleans clubs through weekly lessons led by Tero. They later performed at the school and community events.
When members of the Indian community need help, they know Tero will be eager to lend a hand. His performances at benefit events and on recordings have helped raise money for sick or injured compatriots and for the Indian organizations themselves. He is a member of the Mardi Gras Indian Hall of Fame, and in 2002 received the Indians' prestigious Crystal Feather award. -- McNulty
Eboni Price, 32
Physician, Associate Program Director for Residency Training, Tulane Medical School
Dr. Eboni Price works on the front lines of what she describes as a "paradigm shift" in how health care is being delivered in New Orleans. Immediately following Katrina, Price, associate program director for residency training at Tulane Medical School, needed to find places for her residents to train because the traditional teaching hospitals in New Orleans, Charity and the V.A., were closed.
Price, who was born in Charity Hospital, saw the challenge as an opportunity to apply what she had learned studying and working in other health-care systems around the country.
"In coming back here, I'd always had the vision of trying to restructure -- at least the outpatient side of it -- to mimic what I'd seen in other cities that I thought was beneficial," Price says.
For Price, who graduated from John Hopkins University with a medical degree as well a master's degree in public health, that meant instead of having large hospitals like Charity as the main point of primary health care, care should be decentralized into many smaller community-based health centers. The Tulane Community Health Clinic located in Covenant House had just been established to treat first responders, and Price realized the center would be an asset to the population returning to Covenant's Treme/French Quarter neighborhood as well as a place for her residents. Problem solved.
Her first day at the center in mid-September 2005 was a lonely one. Rampart Street was deserted and she found only two medical personnel from New York inside the clinic. Patients, mostly police officers, slowly trickled into the building. Business has picked up considerably since then, and the staff -- made up of Tulane internists, nurses and residents -- have provided free medical services to more than 10,000 people within the community. Price still works and teaches residents at the clinic. She believes that as physician and public-health advocate, there's no place like home.
"Where else can you be where you can take something and sculpt it into a system that's a better way for delivering primary care?" she says. -- Winkler-Schmit
Ryan Finn, 28
Owner, Ryan Finn Ocean Sailing
Ryan Finn's sailboat is named Myrna Minkoff after a character from the modern New Orleans classic novel A Confederacy Of Dunces, and the boat's hull number is 504, a nod to the local telephone area code. But in two upcoming long-distance, single-handed sailboat races, Finn will be representing the New Orleans area in a much more meaningful way as he dedicates his races to raising awareness of the plight of Louisiana's eroding coastal wetlands.
"I would like to use my campaign as an educational platform because that's how I see it being most useful," says Finn. "On the water, I am one man overcoming great obstacles and challenges Mother Nature presents. Off the water, I am one of many people doing the same thing."
The New Orleans native grew up sailing, but it was his experience with Hodgkin's Lymphoma at age 20 that led him to the demanding specialty of single-handed long-distance sailing. While undergoing treatment, he compulsively followed the progress of a solo sailboat race around the world called the Around Alone.
"It was the complete opposite of my cancer treatment and following it got me through," Finn says. "I thought, 'When I'm finished with this cancer b.s., I'm going to do that.'"
In 2004, he raised money for Louisiana's Leukemia and Lymphoma Society during a single-handed race he completed from San Francisco to Hawaii. Now his sights are set on the Bermuda 1-2, a race between Newport, R.I., and Bermuda that begins in July, and the Mini Transat in 2009 -- a single-handed race from France to Brazil on 21-foot sailboats. He will be training on Lake Pontchartrain, and his team of supporters is working to secure a title sponsor. Updates are available at www.ryanfinnoceanracing.com. -- McNulty
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