Persons of the Week: Howard University Students

March 24, 2006 — -- When students at Howard University set out to spend spring break helping Gulf Coast residents clean up from Hurricane Katrina, they figured finding 100 volunteers would mean success.

"We thought we'd get 100, and we thought that'd be great," Alexis Logan said. "To have 100 committed Howard University students going down to New Orleans."

Instead, more than 250 students signed up and boarded the buses. "It's almost a 20-hour bus ride, a loud and rowdy busful of young people," said student Lisa Rawlings. "And when we got to New Orleans, a hush fell over the bus."

The students insisted on heading for the hardest-hit neighborhood of New Orleans: the Ninth Ward.

"You stopped at the Lower Ninth Ward and had an opportunity to take in what had happened there," Rawlings said. "There was complete silence. There was no sound coming from the Ninth Ward."

Logan, who is studying political science, added, "The situation was nothing that you could have prepared for."

One of her fellow volunteers, H. Anthony Moore, a history major who wants to be a politician, said he was shocked by what he saw. "It was like a Third World country," he said.

Rawlings said the students were "kinda rocked to their core to touch and feel and see and smell and hear what Mother Nature really is capable of."

The students worked gutting homes down to their structures so they could be rebuilt -- a grueling assignment.

"It consisted of putting on [protective] suits, masks, goggles, helmets, boots, hard hats," Logan said. "We had to be protected because a lot of these houses were infested with black deadly mold."

Moore said the task was "incredibly gross."

"I recall pulling out a refrigerator, just six months of food," he said. "And the smell, it's just all over your clothes. But you knew it was worth it because you were helping out a family."

Logan said the people of New Orleans "were just like me. They were just like my grandparents, but everything was taken away."

Changing Lives

The students from the historically black Howard University felt a connection to the community where the black population had been so deeply affected.

"The residents were so happy to see students who looked like them, who came to their aid and to show their support and their love and their concern," Rawlings said.

Moore added: "It's very important for the African-American community [in the] Lower Ninth Ward to see someone their own color helping them. That one week that I took out to help my people is a very powerful statement."

The Howard students pitched tents for five nights on grounds still surrounded by sandbags. They documented their mission with video cameras.

Their efforts were much appreciated by residents.

"I know I need help, but I have no one to help me," said homeowner Mary Honore, who cried as a student assured her "we're here for you."

Rawlings said people believed they'd been forgotten and left behind. "They were so appreciative to know that people did care," she said.

All the students who spoke with ABC News said they wanted to return to New Orleans to help again until the city is restored, no matter how much sweat and effort it will take.

"It definitely did change me," Logan said. "I now understand that going down there one time is not enough. It's gonna take us continuously going down there to truly solve this problem."

ABC News' Elizabeth Vargas reported this story for "World News Tonight."