July 16, 2007

Pellissippi State’s Outdoor Club extends help to Louisiana community

The Yellow Ninjas slept in a blown-out building in the billowing heat. The exterior walls were gone.

During the day the group tried to help the locals in whatever ways were most needed: cleaning up, making repairs, interacting with the children.

The “Yellow Ninjas”—it sounds like a team from the “Survivor” reality show—is a group of volunteers from Pellissippi State Technical Community College’s Outdoor Club who traveled recently to Buras, La., to offer post-Katrina support.

 Like “Survivor” participants, crew members did find themselves isolated, in harsh, unfamiliar surroundings, but their overall experience was far more positive.

“An extraordinary bonding experience.” That is how Mary Bledsoe, Student Life and Recreation director at the Pellissippi State, described the five-day end-of-the-school-year trip.

The 15 club members who participated in the volunteer effort did what they could to help the residents of Buras, a community an hour and a half south of New Orleans that has seen only 30 percent of its population return.

Hurricane Katrina actually made landfall in the Buras area, says Bledsoe, and the area is still in shambles nearly two years later.

The Yellow Ninjas stayed in what was left of the YMCA, working alongside other college groups recruited by a relief organization called Emergency Communities.

Each morning, the Pellissippi State team would decide how best to spend its time.

Emergency Communities offered a free laundry facility—according to Bledsoe, the only one within 12 miles—and distributed free food and clothing and household goods. The organization served residents hot meals three times a day, and provided an Internet cafe and a community meeting area.

The volunteers staffed each service and worked on off-site projects as well.

“The local residents,” said Bledsoe, “contacted Emergency Communities for assistance with various tasks and projects, like gutting a house, picking up trash, and planting and weeding gardens for the elderly.

“We helped a resident named Manny get electricity hooked back up to his mother’s house,” she said. Other off-site work included digging trenches for sewer and water connections.

 Some of the students spent time with children at a Federal Emergency Management Agency trailer park.

 “There were 450 trailers 12 feet apart from each other on an old baseball field,” Bledsoe said. “It was enclosed with chain link fence and barbed wire and had security 24 hours. The Pellissippi State students did crafts and games and gave the children a lot of love. They worked with them to improve their language and politeness.”

“It was different,” said Jared Agresta, a sophomore in computer science. “The residents lived in a different world with a different life than I’d ever seen before.” He says the park was prison-like, with a fence and security guards. Some of the children had problems with anger, says Agresta.

“But when we got to know them, they were good kids.”

The Pellissippi State team played hide-and-seek, touch football, and baseball and did puzzles and face painting with the children.

Cassia Davidson worked with Agresta at the FEMA trailer park.

“There wasn’t grass anywhere, only gravel,” said Davidson, who plans to transfer to Middle Tennessee State University this August. “The trailers were so close together you could hardly park a car between them. They were like RV trailers, not like home trailers. There were all these energetic kids with nothing to do.” Of all the activities the Pellissippi State team took part in, she says, the kids liked the face painting the best.

“The experience was absolutely amazing,” Davidson said.

Christie Davis, a sophomore in electronic media, agrees.

“It was probably one of the greatest experiences I ever had in my life. I didn’t realize how bad things were there and how much the people still needed help.”

“The volunteers’ level of willingness was absolutely amazing,” Bledsoe said of the Pellissippi State students. “We didn’t have any apathy, complacency or laziness, or any disagreements. It was one of the best bonding experiences I’ve ever had with a student group.

 “They [the students] were all so willing to work no matter what they had to do. It was kind of like the Tennessee Volunteers—they really earned their name.”

So what about that name? Yellow Ninjas.

“Kim and I had decided to call our group meetings ‘Tribal Councils,’” Bledsoe said. “At the first Tribal Council meeting, at 6:30 a.m. Monday, we asked the group to think of a catchy name for our group. Nothing was decided.

“When we arrived at Emergency Communities, we heard that the resident volunteers were curious about who was coming down to Buras.… They had only heard rumors that it was a large group, but didn’t know where they were coming from or who they were.

“So they made up stories about the impending group’s arrival. One of the stories they created was that we were a group of Ninjas from the North, because we were coming late at night after most were asleep. We sneaked into camp and set up our tents very quietly! They nicknamed us the Ninjas. Once we heard that story, we decided to name our group the Yellow Ninjas, because we all had specially designed yellow T-shirts indicating we were from the Pellissippi State Outdoor Club.”

The idea for heading to Louisiana was the vision of Outdoor Club President Bobby Nicholson, a recent Pellissippi State graduate who plans to transfer to Maryville College. The Outdoor Club voted to make the trip a reality and then worked to get approval from the Pellissippi State administration to raise the money to go.

“The club had several fundraisers prior to the trip down there,” Bledsoe said. “They raised $1,500 to give to the Buras community. Student Life and Recreation paid for the travel expenses, and students contributed $35 each—$5 for a T-shirt and $30 to donate to victim relief.”

Nicholson, Bledsoe and Kim Thomas, Student Life coordinator, organized the trip, and Bledsoe, Thomas, faculty member Ron Bridges and Admissions employee Debbie Petty served as advisors.

“Every evening we would gather as a group,” said Bledsoe. “We would talk about the day, how it had impacted us, what we were learning, what we were feeling. Part of the Tribal Counsel was to recognize what each other had done. Volunteers would comment about how they were inspired by so and so because he was on the job from the beginning to the end.”

The trip wasn’t all work, however.

“We had lots of playtime,” Bledsoe said. “We stopped in New Orleans on the way down and on the way back up. The students got to experience the French Quarter and beignets [a deep-fried pastry].”

The Louisiana trip was limited to 20, says Bledsoe, because only three vans were available. The next trip, however, will be open to many more.

The Outdoor Club’s next excursion has been dubbed “Tennessee Back Roads,” and is scheduled Oct. 12-15. Students will work with Habitat for Humanity in Scott and Morgan counties. The group will stay in a dormitory-style cabin in the Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area.

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Pellissippi State Technical Community College
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