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FEATURE: Gulf Coast Leaders Continue to Lead in the Recovery of their Communities
Friday, July 20, 2007
Ask four of the five Gulf Coast Leaders how things have changed since we met them a year ago as new CHL award recipients, and the answer across the board was… some things are better, but many things are worse.
KIM DILOSA AND YOUTHANSIA OPEN NEW TEEN CENTER FOR NON-VIOLENCE
 For Kim Dilosa, who heads the YOUTHanasia Foundation, an organization with a diverse set of programs geared to youth development and after school programs, the need to forge ahead with programs for youth is critical A new Teen Center for Non-Violence opened in June… and not a moment too soon according to Kim.. “Right now, there’s a terrible crime spree here involving teens,” she said. She attributes the increase in crime to the lack of mental health services and not enough law enforcement. She is especially aware of a lot of domestic violence issues and there is nowhere for people to turn for help, especially the youth, so they turn to trouble, she says. The Teen Center is housing a summer camp for teens in grades 8-12. During the four-week program, teens learn to develop life skills as well as participate in drama, hip-hop, music, poetry and dance. When the school year begins, the Teen Center will house after-school programs. Kim says that one of the best decisions she made was to use some of her CHL award to hire a communications consultant. The time Kim is saving has freed her up to pursue more resources and develop more programs for the Teen Center and YOUTHanasia programs. Kim’s devoted right now to equipping the Teen Center in time for the new school year. It especially needs a copy machine and computers for the student computer lab. Contact Kim Dilosa at Youthanasiafoundation@yahoo.com or visit www.teenfriendlygno.com.
DR. BEVERLY WRIGHT SPEAKS OUT ABOUT THE LEVEE REPORT
 The idea that there is still no protection from future storms for the most vulnerable residents of New Orleans is the hot button issue these days for Dr. Beverly Wright and her organization, the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice (DSCEJ). The recent release of the official levee report revealed that one community, the affluent Lakeview community, is the only one protected from future storms. Dr. Wright is outspoken on this issue and on the issue of environmental health hazards that impede those trying to rebuild and return safely to their communities. Dr. Wright leveraged the CHL award money this year and saw a great return from a charitable trust fund, donors and is receiving a significant grant from the Kellogg Foundation to help educate residents through tool kits and town hall meetings, about environmental hazards and the safe way to reenter their homes. A core program of the Center that continues to bring residents together is the Safe Way Back Home project. Residents gather to clean up their streets block by block, removing contaminated waste and tainted dirt, replacing it with new top soil and sod. In the meantime, DSCEJ is finally back in New Orleans in a new 1000 square foot office space in a building on Crowder Boulevard, a half block from Lake Ponchetrain. Displaced after Katrina, the Center operated from Baton Rouge until now. DSCEJ maintains strong links to higher education institutions, including Dillard University and Howard University, with whom it is rehabilitating 25 houses for moderate to low income families and the elderly. Dr. Wright notes there has been a 47% increase in the death rate since Katrina and she believes the most vulnerable elderly simply do not have the will to live. There are more heart attacks among younger men 50-55 - where they do not survive. She points to the desperation some feel where nothing has happened to help them regain their lives since the storms. She agrees with Kim Dilosa that there is a dire need for mental health services and stepped up law enforcement in the region. Read Dr. Wright's paper Toxic Waste and Race at Twenty and learn more about the work of DSCEJ at www.dscej.org
AN URBAN FARM AND HEALTH CLINIC ARE FATHER VIEN NGUYEN'S VISION FOR REVITALIZATION
 The best way to share news of the progress with Father Vien Nguyen, chairman of the board ofMQVN Community Development Corporation, is to share excerpts from a letter MQV submitted to USA Today for the paper’s Voices of Katrina series published on June 26, 2007.
Mary Queen of Viet Nam Community Development Corp. is a non-profit organization in the Vietnamese-American community in New Orleans East, a community rich in culture and religion. Before the storm, there were approximately 7,000 Vietnamese-Americans living in this close-knit community with the Mary Queen of Viet Nam Church being the focal point.
Hurricane Katrina devastated this predominantly Roman Catholic community with severe wind damage and some flooding. In the immediate aftermath of the storm, the community pulled together to help rebuild, and we have had a return rate of 90%. But there were many challenges:
• Temporary housing was a huge issue because homes were flooded and damaged. In November 2005, to address the lack of temporary housing, the community pushed for 199 Federal Emergency Management Agency trailers to be placed across from the church. At first, the mayor of New Orleans resisted the idea. So the community came together to perform an act of civil disobedience by setting up a "tent city campaign." Rows of tents were set up on church grounds, and families slept in them for a week until we gained national attention. Public pressure was placed on Mayor Ray Nagin, and he signed off on the papers for the trailers to be placed in our community.
 • Many residents were also reluctant to return because of a hazardous landfill that opened less than a mile from the community after the hurricane. This landfill was problematic because it was not properly lined, and its groundwater was being pumped into a canal that runs through the community. After many protests, the landfill was finally shut down.
We just recently celebrated the one-year anniversary of our organization. Thus far, we have taken on projects such as developing a senior retirement center, establishing a charter school, revitalizing the Vietnamese major business districts, carrying out environmental justice campaigns and developing a cooperative urban farm for residents.
NOTE: Susan Do, deputy director of MQVN Development Corporation spoke to CHLon behalf of Father Vien, who was out of the country at the time of this interview. According to Susan, MQVN is focused in four major directions. First is to provide safe and affordable housing for residents, many of them seniors, still living in FEMA trailers or elsewhere in the region, who wish to return to the community and their own housing. Second, revitalize and support the return of business to New Orleans East. Third, MQVN has plans to create an urban project, including 20 acres of land for farming, a retail market, trails, and a poind for fishing. Finally, a key effort is underway to develop a community health clinic, where people can walk to receive culturally competent health care services. Currently, there are long lines at Charity Hospital 20 miles away. Methodist Hospital, located in closer proximity to New Orleans East, has not reopened since Katrina. Contact Father Vien at NTV3@aol.com.
JOE DAWSEY: GENERAL CONTRACTOR OF HEALTH FOR THE PEOPLE OF COASTAL MISSISSIPPI
 Joe Dawsey doesn’t let grass grow under his feet. This confident executive director of Coastal Family Health Center, he is overseeing six construction projects that will help restore health services to low-income residents of coastal Mississippi. Soon after he received the CHL Gulf Coast award, he was awarded $3.4 million from the country of Qatar to provide care for uninsured patients and to staff a mobile clinic. Joe got busy building with a $7.3 million federal government construction grant. These six projects, including a new 20,000 square foot building in Biloxi that will house medical, dental and optometry services and serve 10,000 annually, will restore and add some to the infrastructure of what Coastal Family Health Center was pre-Katrina. His bigger challenge is finding doctors, nurses and dentists to staff the clinics and mobile units. Joe says the professionals are going to hospitals to work because of incentives offered them as a result of $10 million recruitment package they got. Health clinics did not receive recruitment dollars. Joe says he has to continue with the construction projects or risk losing funding to do so. He has seen staff turnover increase since Katrina and attributes it to a much higher cost of living, skyrocketing insurance, high rents and the lack of incentives to work in a clinic vs. a hospital.  Joe remains optimistic and he has good reason to be. During the cleanup, a group of volunteer business people across the country were in the Gulf to help and Joe doesn’t know exactly how it happened, but they adopted Coastal Family Health. After they left, and every Thursday for the past 18 months, they have a conference call with Joe. It’s called the Thursday Morning Group. Joe says it varies, but there are 15 or so people on the call each week. They are CEOs, architects, professors, and lawyers all with one goal in mind… to help Coastal solve problems collectively and collaboratively. For example, the deadline for a Federal grant proposal for money Congress earmarked for states to rebuild was upon him. Joe learned about the grant on April 7. It was due April 14. Joe needed help. Members of the Thursday Morning Group took pieces of the proposal and got it done. Joe says the quality of work was amazing and at the end of June Joe learned that Coastal received the multi-million dollar construction grant. So Joe continues to build and has is now working on integrating mental health and primary care services in the clinics. Like the other leaders, Joe is seeing the hope people may have had from initial promises of help, fade as nothing is being done to help move many out of trailers or to build affordable housing. In the meantime, Joe Dawsey and Coastal Family Health Center will make sure that the health care services the community needs to help make them whole again, are back. Joe and Coastal Family Health Centers were featured in a PBS Newshour story in May, 2006. View and/or read the transcript at http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/health/jan-june06/mississippi_05-17.html . Coastal's Web site is http://www.coastalfamilyhealth.com/.
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