Open! The Goin' Home Cafe, Lower 9th Ward, New Orleans - Our new site is finally open, right in the heart of the Lower 9th Ward. In a way, this area was the epicentre of the Katrina disaster, but it is also an area of a tight-knit, determined, and strong community with a will to return. We are helping them on that quest with free meals, laundry services, gutting, internet, children's programs, and anything else that is asked of us. Come and volunteer!
Open! The Y Caf�, Buras, Plaquemines Parish, LA, May, 2006-?.
The United Way and the government of Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana invited
us to open a new free kitchen and community center in Buras, the town
where Hurricane Katrina first made landfall. Our relief operation served
its first meal on 
June1st and is now serving three hot meals to over
200 residents daily. We are operating a free Laundromat and internet caf�
to accompany our kids’ space, showers and air-conditioned community
spaces for the local residents. Come volunteer!
Closed. Camp Hope, Violet, St Bernard
Parish, LA, May-August, 2006. After closing the Made With Love
Cafe, we opened operations at Camp Hope where we served thousands of volunteers
who came to St. Bernard Parish to gut homes, as well as the residents
we served at the Made with Love Caf� & Grill. We fed volunteers
from Habitat for Humanity, Americorps and others who were working to continue
the recovery of the Parish. We also provided a distribution center, a
resident lounge, and lots of free live music at the site.
Closed. Made
With Love Cafe & Grill, Arabi, LA, December, 2005-May, 2006.
Emergency Communities arrived in St. Bernard Parish on November 28, 2005 and built the Made with Love Caf� and Grill in
the parking lot of an off-track betting parlor. St. Bernard Parish was
home to more than 65,000 residents before Hurricanes Katrina and Rita—as
of March only about 10,000 had returned. The entire Parish was flooded
with five to twelve feet of standing water for over two weeks after the
overwhelmed levees succumbed to a twenty-five foot storm surge.
In the six months we were open, we served over 200,000 meals to returning
residents and volunteers from around the area.� We offered nutritious
meals, using fresh ingredients—creating a friendly and hospitable
atmosphere, because comfort and respect are as much a part of recovery
as a hot meal. Residents also had access to grocery distribution, alternative
medicine and first aid, a bike co-op, free internet and long distance
telephone access, and dance lessons.� A group of residents even held
weekly meetings in our dome to plan a permanent community center, eventually
forming their own non-profit.� (link to Iray’s website, http://groups.msn.com/ccstbp/)
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The Count and Countess of the serving line at Made With Love Cafe
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�2006 Emergency Communities
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