Service first, career later
'04 grad takes a year to help rebuild homes, lives on Gulf Coast
ISSUE: 05/01/07 > FEATURES > Service first, career later
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After earning a music business degree, Kelly Merkel, above left, wasn’t ready to commit to a career. Instead, she offered a year of service to the AmeriCorps*NCCC program and joined a 10-person team that works in hurricane ravaged areas on the Gulf Coast. |
When employment at a local bank was not fulfilling, 24-year-old Kelly Merkel sought to do something more meaningful. With a music business degree in hand, Merkel was unsure of her career path when she graduated from Belmont in 2004 but was interested in something nonprofit.
Merkel joined the AmeriCorps*NCCC program in July 2006 and became a part of their post-Katrina project along the Gulf Coast, from Louisiana to Alabama.
Merkel is part of a team of 10 people from all over the United States. The group works for six to eight weeks in one location, then moves on to another to rebuild the lives of Gulf Coast residents.
Merkel, who had never before seen New Orleans, described the Katrina aftermath as depressing and devastating. Seeing piles of debris and crumbled homes daily, Merkel said, “You become desensitized to it because you have to keep going.”
The effects of Katrina drastically changed daily life for residents along the Gulf Coast. Most surprisingly, in a year and a half not much has changed. It is still filled with FEMA trailers in which residents are forced to live, understaffed restaurants that still close early because its employees were relocated and most Wal-Marts are no longer 24-hour establishments.
“More people should come see it because they don’t believe it’s still the same,” Merkel said. “How in over a year are they supposed to get everything back?”
As Merkel has traveled along the Gulf Coast, she has seen an uplifting sense of morale from the residents. She was amazed they are so “understanding and hopeful for the future though everything is gone.” The residents are grateful for all the hard work Merkel and her fellow crew members do.
| Getting involved |
| The AmeriCorps*NCCC program, for Americans 18-24, is a team-based effort to serve communities in need. In exchange for a year of service, participants earn education awards to pay tuition or to help repay student loans. See the website for more information. |
Homeowners are not the only ones to benefit from the AmeriCorps project. The crew reads and tutors children in affected areas and works to preserve local parks and wildlife. This is a part of AmeriCorps’ national creed to help “address critical needs in communities.”
The AmeriCorps activities have the team swinging hammers in New Orleans one month and counting birds in Naples, Fla., the next.
Merkel and her crew are currently in Florida helping with the preservation of a local park by weed-eating and tracking and recording birds and plants. The group will get to put the carpentry skills acquired in New Orleans to good use when they build a boardwalk for the park.
When Merkel’s “experience of different cities” comes to an end in July, she wants to continue working with nonprofit organizations and would like to start her own to promote art education among children.
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