October 5, 2005

Tulane students have a long history of community service, but four current students have taken the circumstances created by Hurricane Katrina as the impetus to do nothing less than work to rebuild the community they have come to love.

“Rescue, Relief and Rebuilding” are the goals of the New Orleans Hurricane Fund, a volunteer-based fundraising organization established by Tulane juniors Adam Hawf of Columbia, Mo., Kevin Lander of Boulder, Colo., Stephen Richer of Salt Lake City, Utah, and Aaron Rubens of Kalamazoo, Mich.

Using both a website (www.nolahurricanefund.org) and a network of hundreds of Tulane student volunteers fanned across the country, the fund has to date raised more than $35,000 through cash donations and T-shirt and bracelet sales and established relief and donation programs at a number of other universities. All donations to the fund and proceeds from T-shirt sales on the website will go directly to New Orleans relief and rebuilding efforts.

Working to better the New Orleans community is nothing new for the Hurricane Fund founders, who met as Tulane freshmen and decided to take the fall 2005 semester off in order to run the relief organization. Lander and Richer, both vice presidents of Tulane’s CACTUS student community service organization, had worked as mentors at Lafayette Elementary, while Hawf tutored New Orleans students for the ACT exams and Rubens volunteered as an emergency medical technician.

Like many others, the four found themselves evacuated from their adopted hometown and glued to the TV news channels following the hurricane and subsequent flooding. As they saw the many needs New Orleans would face in rebuilding, the idea for the fund was born.

The initial phase of the fund was focused on relief efforts—money has already been provided to the Tulane Emergency Medical Service, which was involved in taking stranded New Orleanians to the medical triage area established at Louis Armstrong International Airport in the days following the storm. Backpacks stuffed with school supplies and games were also provided to children in shelters.

Now, the fund organizers are focused on identifying needy families and rebuilding efforts that need a boost. They also are looking into other avenues to help the rebuilding process, including lobbying for a contemporary rebuilding of New Orleans and ways to help families with children in the Tulane community.

And they are in it for the duration. “Our efforts will continue long after the initial surge of support from the rest of the country has waned,” Rubens says. “Living in the city and using established university connections, we can target projects that need us most, helping the people we have worked with and have come to care about.”

--Suzanne Johnson

Return to the Tulane home page