New Orleans, where the roots of hope run deep.

At the beginning of June, Maryann Broxton and Guillaume Charvon, co-coordinators of the Multidimensional Aspects of Poverty (MAP) project in the US, were welcomed in New Orleans to present the MAP report and results. For weeks, Maria Victoire and Dee Mauss had been working tirelessly to mobilize speakers from different walks of life: people from the neighborhood where ATD Fourth World New Orleans has its office, but also members of ATD Fourth World elsewhere in the region, including Mississippi, where families were displaced after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

The event was a success as many people gathered at the Global Green Community & Climate Action Center, in the Lower Ninth Ward – the neighborhood which suffered some of the worst destruction during Katrina, and which has been most glaringly left behind as the City has tried to rebuild. Yet, it is a neighborhood with much initiative and vision for its future, including int erms of sustainability. For Maria and Dee, it was clear that the Ninth Ward was the ideal environment to start sharing our results in Louisiana. A report will be online on our website soon, presenting the contributions of our powerful speakers, including Ashana Bigard, Dennis Kalob, Don Everard, Troy Douse and Jen Scott.

At the end of the meeting, Guillaume Charvon commented:

“New Orleans has a soul beyond the French Quarter. Our team here is so close to the struggle and hope of the Seventh and Ninth Wards. Their presence is what enabled the MAP project to be nurtured by the experience and knowledge of the people here. And today, during the event, we’ve heard so much about the consequences of subjugation - how the public school system is dismantled, how the value of one’s work is determined by the level of their education, how communities are broken by housing policies, and how much even our health is impacted differently according to who you are…

But we’ve heard also how much people are standing up, proud of who they are, of their culture, and how communities cultivate their hope of fairness and of a bright future for them and their City, beyond the invisible walls that keep us apart. Definitely, in New Orleans, the roots of hope run deep.”