Rebuild New Orleans

Plan to Rebuild New Orleans Update 5/12/07
After writing a post titled Plan to Rebuild New Orleans I recieved some terrific feedback in the form of comments. This post will be a continuation that will evolve into plans then plans into action. This post will also be an evolving post and will continue from time to time updating progress and plans made on this project.

One important principle of this rebuilding plan should be the education, mentoring and development of the young men participating in this program. I believe we should research and network with orginizations that specialize in prisoner reform and education. After getting information from those orginizations we should build our curriculum around the best and most productive programs we have found. The convicts must understand up front that this program is all about earning your way by working hard and smart.

This program is all about bieng a self starter and leader these are the type of values and principles I would like, to be apparent in our work and results. The classroom will be as big a part of this program as the work skills taught. Leadership and hard work should always be rewarded and emphasized. The goal of this program is to get these young men ready to go back in the system and maintain thier lives and their families.

Equally important will be the selecting of people to supervise the prison workforce. They must be people who can understand the issues and needs of the workers and relate to them on a human to human basis as well. Also they must be expierenced in prisoner to prisoner relations and able to keep peace and stability so that work can be done in a competent and regular manner. We must also have goverment security (prison gaurds).

Also once perfected this program could be used to rebuild other damaged structures in New Orleans damaged by the Hurricane. So the rebuilding of New Orleans could be a very big oppurtunity for non violent offenders in future years to come. It would be an oppurtunity for some to work while earning time off and learning productive work skills that will allow them to make a living without resulting to illegal means. Once again we should not reinvent the wheel but we should research people and groups who have and currently work with convicts. Those that are particularly well regarded are programs we should start with.

We should also apply to orginizations that fund prison reform through grants and other means to see if we can get funding for such a venture. I think if we start with small pilot programs we should be able to find some money somewhere. Since thier are already community service work study program working with convicts we should talk to them to get the best advise, then use that advise to custom design our own project.

It also would be benificial to work with church orginizations specifically those who already have had expirence and success at working with prisoners and parolees. It may be possible to get such an inniative moving on a small scale especially the part of the program involving the parolees. We should start with the churches already working with parolees and former convicts having a rough time finding work. We should also start with young men currently on parole or ex offenders who need job training. In fact I think it would be important to have a faith based part of this program working begining this type of rebuilding work ASAP because thier are now thousands of young black men out of jail with no job skills and bills to pay(including child support).

Once we have located the right people to begin working with we should apply to the goverment for money specifically for faith based inniatives. We also should apply to the goverment for whatever funds they have available for prisoner work training programs. The different home repair Corps should be broken down into groups of 8-5 workers to go into specific communities and start the repair work that is desperately needed fixing up communities one by one. Also bringing in churches at the begining may be a way to make such an innitiative more legitimate because of the credibility churches come with but also in working through churches it may be possible to get a good source of funding from the catholic church and other church orginizations. Also remember that New Orleans has a lot of historic Catholic Churches.

Built into this program thier should be a leadership development Cadre constantly refined with the purpose of producing leaders to see this rebuilding effort through. Initially this leadership Cadre should be composed of inmates who have demonstrated good behavior and have proven to be good role models as well as leaders.

The Convict/parolees that have Carpentry skills should be grouped together first to develop a technique and a rythym to the rebuilding process. Afterwards they should be broken up amongst the different Corps to lead and guide and to train other workers. This job should be all about training folks to be productive and competent workers.

Finally the importance of family must be continuously stressed to the participants of this project. For those men with children parenting classes should be taught and the responsiblity of bieng a parent should be emphasized over and over again. The beauty of fatherhood should be taught to these young men and they should be encouraged to call thier children regularly. Finacial literacy should be taught to these men so that when they graduate they will know how to responsibly manage thier money and build for the future.

This are the groups and orginizations I will need to contact

DC Court and Prison system for permission to work with that population.

The Parole board and Probation officers.

Churches in Washington DC that work with ex-convicts and at risk young men.

Churches in New Orleans that work with the same populatioin specifically because they should be able to orginize something immediately.

Job skills training programs such as Job core and arch that give job training in home repair and carpentry to see if they could adjust thier programs to send workers down to new orleans to help rebuild while getting credits they need to graduate from the pragrams they are in.

Officials down in New Orleans to figure out where our services where needed first as well as other logistics.

I would also try to contact individuals such as

Master P

Warrick Dunn (Already has a foundation that builds homes for single mother)

Wynton Marsalis

Spike Lee

I will also establish contacts with New Orleans Bloggers who are plugged in to the rebuilding issue to find out exactly who I need to talk to and what would be needed to get this process moving.

A lot of the staff for this program should be volunteer based on the model of Mercy ships that sail all over the world providing free medical care to Impoverished African and other third world countries.

I welcome any advice people may have on things that can be done to get the ball rolling on this process I have also created a blog speciifically for developing this idea. Please leave comments thier

Plan to Rebuild New Orleans

Passage 4: " Convict Workforce. Hire ex-cons who no one else will hire and have them fix up Black communities in return for food, shelter, clothing, recommendation letters, and help finding another job. Employ them as security guards and construction and maintenance workers. Make it so that those who want to change can find rewarding work that can help our communities. "

The above passage is taken from a post by a very talented and bright blogger called Bronze Trinity. The name of this post is 17 action plans to help the african diaspor.

This Post written by Bronze Trinity is made up of passages/ideas on what we can do to help black folks the world over. Anyway after reading the forth item of this post it got me thinking on some thoughts I have been chewing on in my mind for a while now.

My thinking on this is, why allow black men to sit in prison for non violent crimes especially when they will eventually be released with no skills and even less job oppurtunities do to the fact that it is harder for convicted felons to get and keep employment. Thier are thousands of black men sitting in prison who are non violent offenders in jail for things such as

1)Bieng caught with or smoking weed in public,
2)Non voilent crack possession
3)Parole or probation violations sometimes all over misunderstandings.
4)Thousands of people in jail for bieng in the wrong place at the wrong time.
5) Some folks just in jail for crimes they didnt committ, in fact over 200 men have been exonerated by DNA or other evidence.
6) And lots of other frivolous reasons.

Instead of having hundreds of thousands of these young black non violent offenders sit in jail where they are at an extreme risk of contracting Hiv why not create a Carpentary and Home Repair Corps to be sent to rebuild New Orleans and other hurricane damaged areas.

This service would be free to residents of New Orleans hurt by hurricane Katrina who would qualify depening on how much money they make. Off hand I would imagine the Corp would consist of non violent offenders and disadvantaged youth from all around black america. They would be housed in central locations to be split up into groups of 200 hundred to be managed by the needed staff in specific devestated areas. Each corp would have its own staff and whatever logistics and supplies needed.

Folks in New Orleans hurt by Katrina could get assistance from these Carpentry Corps. These Corps could also be utilized to help in the in areas other than New Orleans for things such as the rebuilding of the Leeves, factories, warehouses ect.

If a project like this could be managed efficiently and responsibly this project could turn into a win win situation for all concerned parties in america. America would get its most Unique richest city rebuilt, African Americns in New Orleans would get empowering amounts of assistance in home building and other life rebuilding areas. The young men who would make up the corp would get valuble job training and expirence they would also learn how to live and work in harmony with other folks.

Also the Corp workers should be paid a salary to be held in a bank account to be saved and given to each corp member upon completion/graduation of the project. Hopefully after this project they will have been taught enough so that these thousands of young men are able to aquire the business and carpentry skills to empower them to create thier own vehicles for success.

Perhaps the program would break down into 3 days a week of work site(carpentry) training and 2 days a week of class room and highschool graduation training. Included in this program would be mentorship, job etiqette and intierview training, tutoring, ect.
This project would be designed to mentor, tutor, teach carpentry and home repair, painting, Landscaping, ect to the young men with the goal of making them self sufficient. It would also be designed to teach as many of the youth willing to work hard and smarter and demonstraing an ability to lead some administrative skills, leadership and technical skills.

The way to get this project moving is to make contact with and learn from these guys for we should not reinvent any wheels in this process thier are already highly qualified and passionate orginizations and individuals working on the issues this project hopes to adress. Thier are also people and groups who run programs like this one, for the population we will be working with who have had tremondous sucess. We should find out who they are, what they did and what made thier programs successful take some of those theories and add them to creative our own Carpenty and home repair Corps.

I guesse another way of looking at this would be to imagine a group of like minded, passionate folks who are qualified and motivated to work on this issue pointing thier intellect, time and resources in the direction of reforming young black men to love themselves while focusing on empoweing them and teaching them the skills to earn a living in society.



Here are areas we could explore for potential resources.

1) Americorps Grants
2) The clinton foundation and gates foundation
3) Summer youth workers to work in New Orleans.
4) Volunteers and interns especially with social science and community service majors. Interns from President clintons school of public service would be a great place to start.
5) Volunteer Carpenters and Contractors to teach and train the young men in carpentry.
6) Job Corp members from all over the country ( In fact this could be a hearty supply of labor for a mission rebuilding New Orleans )
7)Arch Programs which train urban youth in skills of carpentry and landscaping.
8) Resources and assistance from habitat for humanity.
9) Perhaps we could apply to the top ten construction companies in the world for grant money to rebuild New Orleans.


It will be important for us to come up with a general budget for this program as well as identify where the money for this program will come from. Im sure we can get funding from some non profit and goverment sources especially those charged with working with the young men we would be working with and those charged with or engaged in the rebuilding effort of New Orleans and the Gulf coast.

Lastly thier are also a large # of ex-offenders who are having ruff time getting employment who could benifit from this project as well and also some of the principles and strategies for these projects can be used on locally in the communities these young men are from.
Of course to bring this into bieng it would take ideas I have not even thought of yet, so I look forwad to any suggestion folks may have and will even include them in further revisions of this post.