Miracle on St. Claude Avenue: All Souls Church and Community Center is a gift to 9th Ward children
Seven years after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Lower 9th Ward, the area's residents are still struggling to rebuild. A walk around the neighborhood -- bounded roughly by the Industrial Canal, St. Bernard Parish, Claiborne and St. Claude avenues -- reveals patches of homes, beautifully rebuilt with clean porches and manicured lawns. But never far away are thousands of blighted properties and vacant lots that cast a depressing shadow.
EnlargeTutor Joan Ann Brown, right, helps Kaniyah Ervin, 6, work on some math problems during an after-school tutoring program at the All Souls Episcopal Church & Community Center in New Orleans on Wednesday, November 28, 2012. (Photo by Chris Granger, Nola.com / The Times-Picayune)After school program helps local children gallery (7 photos)
There isn't a single grocery store or drug store. Gas stations are the only places within walking distance that residents can go to for milk and other staples. Many families, particularly the elderly, depend on sporadic public transit to take them into St. Bernard Parish or the Upper 9th Ward to shop, visit a doctor or take their clothes to a laundromat.
But in the midst of this lingering malaise, something wonderful is happening at the corner of St. Claude and Caffin avenues inside a renovated Walgreens drug store: All Souls Church and Community Center is running a free after-school tutoring program that