Diverse group represents ARHS in New Orleans rebuilding effort

By Mary Carey
Staff Writer

Published on May 16, 2008

Nine student members of the Amherst Regional High School People of Color United after-school club spent their spring break helping residents of New Orleans rebuild houses damaged by Hurricane Katrina - and did their own community proud.

"As a parent of color, just to see teenagers of color doing positive things makes me so happy," Pat Ononibaku said after watching a multimedia presentation of the students' trip at the high school library upon their return.

The students gained a level of political, cultural and economic competence they wouldn't have gotten if they had not traveled to New Orleans, ARHS special education teacher Momodou Sarr said, referring to the stark differences they witnessed between the haves and have-nots.

"You saw injustice at its worst," Sarr said. "Use that competence and look around here. Injustice is all around you."

Asked whether they would do anything differently if they returned to Louisiana, several students said they would stay longer.

"It felt really good going there and seeing people dancing and playing music," said George Wacu. "I liked to see that everyone was so happy, that they got their happiness back after what happened to them."

"It's the United States, but people aren't as blessed as I am here," Kindyl Tolson said. "It made me think of all the things I buy."

"The people there were beautiful people," said Parath Teng.

The students said they felt special just knowing they were staying at the historic North Rampart Community Center in the French Quarter, home to the first indoor swimming pool in the country. Some 60 percent of black children cannot swim, but many learned to swim at that pool, Skelton said. When the hurricane struck, those who could swim were able to help other people who otherwise would have drowned, a not very well known chapter of history, Skelton said.

The students are already agitating to go back in a few months, Liz Skelton and Mary Custard, co-leaders of POCU, said.

Skelton and Custard, an ARHS dean of students, are friends who go way back - Custard is godmother to Skelton's 22-year-old son - but they have never taken a trip together as meaningful as the one to New Orleans, Skelton said. The two women took turns driving 22 hours to New Orleans and 22 hours back.

The trip bonded the students and advisors in "ways you can't imagine," Skelton said.

"I call them my emerging leaders," Custard said of the students, six of whom are ninth-graders, "because that's what they are."

In fact, cultivating leadership skills is one of the aims of POCU. Founded in the late 1990s, the after-school club meets twice a week and has about 35 regular members of all races. Everyone is invited to join, Custard said.

One of its goals is to be a place where students of color can come and be themselves and support each other, as well as be supported by the school and "to understand that they have a greater responsibility to their community and to give back to that community," Custard said.

In a show of support for the students, local churches, friends of Custard and Skelton and ARHS staff members contributed $1,800 to help pay for gas and food for the trip.

POCU's mission is to share members' culture and celebrations with the community, so the students sponsor an annual Kwanzaa celebration and Martin Luther King Day presentation. They work at the annual Martin Luther King Day Breakfast, said to be the most diverse gathering in Amherst, and raise money to help families with immigration issues.

Custard and Skelton both love being advisors to the group, they said.

"For me, especially because I'm a dean and my principle responsibility is overseeing discipline, it helps provide me with a balance I need here," Custard said. "I'm also teaching them about responsibility, which I do in both roles. I really like to see kids doing things outside the classroom. It's important that they're well-rounded and they understand that academics is only part of their education."

Skelton said, "It helps me connect with kids of color. I think it's important for them to be able to go to someone they trust about their inner feelings, and sometimes it's good to talk about absolutely nothing. I think kids hear from their friends in POCU that Mary and I are a safe place."

The important thing about the trip to New Orleans was that it was totally the students' idea, although she and Custard supported it "1,000 percent," Skelton said.

"It helps them be mindful of some of the blessings they have regardless of how little they have," Skelton said. "Those people have nothing," she said, referring to some of the people the students met. "And they're dancing in the street."

Mary Carey can be reached at mary.carey@att.net.