Peddie School student helps with Katrina recovery

   A junior at Peddie School in Hightstown, Zara Stasi spent her spring break with about 15 of her classmates building houses at a Habitat for Humanity site in New Orleans.

By: Lacey Korevec
   When she first saw the devastation Hurricane Katrina wrought on New Orleans, 16-year-old Zara Stasi didn’t know how a group of high school students could make a significant difference.
   "It was just like, ‘How are we gonna help? How are we supposed to fix this,’ " the Cranbury resident said. "But just throughout the week, all the things we did just got bigger than life. Just helping people put up a house, it was kind of unrealistic at first — the goals we were trying to do — but in reality we just didn’t realize what we could accomplish building these houses, especially as kids. It was the most fulfilling experience I’ve ever had with anything I think."
   A junior at Peddie School in Hightstown, Zara spent her spring break with about 15 of her classmates building houses at a Habitat for Humanity site in New Orleans.
   Zara and her classmates volunteered at the site, along with three chaperones from Peddie School, March 11 through March 17. They stayed just outside of New Orleans at a training camp in Slidell, La., where they slept on bunk beds with almost 60 other student volunteers from schools in Baltimore.
   They woke up at 6:30 a.m. and worked straight through from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. There were only three showers for all the volunteers to share and no hot water. But the conditions didn’t get the students down, she said.
   "It was kind of annoying because we didn’t know anyone else," she said. "But by the end, we’d all stay up all night and we’d just talk and I met so many people that I would have never met in my life."
   There were about 12 houses on the site Zara worked on, but she focused on four, putting most of her efforts toward one. She put up walls, carried sinks and toilets to each house and more.
   "I framed the bottom floor of a house, " she said. "We basically had to nail in the beams, which would hold the house, which took about a day and a half. Then we had to nail the sub floor on. I was in charged of using the glue or liquid nail. We had to put that on the beams, fit them and then chalk line each one so we could know where to nail. I was also in charge of the chalk line, I think mostly because no one knew how to use it or refill it. "
   The actual, physical work of helping to build the houses was not foreign to Zara, who said her parents, Diane and Joe Stasi, like to restore houses and have taught her how to use a lot of tools.
   "I’ve had a lot of experience with building and tools," she said. "But it was really neat because I had to help my friends who had never experienced anything with tools. Most people had never touched a hammer but at the same time they were trusted to put up the walls that will help keep this house up for the next 20 years, so that was neat."
   When the hurricane hit in August 2005, Zara remembers helping out by donating clothing, raising money for the cause and working on canned food drives. But looking back, she said she didn’t really understand what was going on in the city and how every bit of help enabled the victims to persevere.
   "Once you’re there, my outlook on Katrina and New Orleans changed," she said. "It’s not just a destroyed city where people are just getting by. It’s really a hopeful place."
   Zara said a lot of people down there and throughout the country are wary as to whether the city should be rebuilt because of its location and the risk of future storms causing more damage. As for Zara, she’s undecided but is just glad she was able to help with the immediate problem of families who are still displaced.
   "It’s kind of a controversial thing," she said. "But we met a lot of people who lived in the city and came as volunteers and you can see it both ways. Maybe it’s not worth building up. It really is nice though. It’s really a nice city."
   But even in the week she was down there, the weather posed a problem. Zara said she and the other volunteers were frustrated when they were rained out of their work site one of the days because the area was flooded.
   "Weather clearly affects New Orleans more than it affects us here," she said. "So, that was tough to deal with and it was tough to realize that our work site was underwater."
   Peddie School offers a volunteer trip each year. Zara said she wasn’t old enough to go last year because the cutoff age is 16, but now that she’s of age, she said her heart is set on going next year.
   "I was so mad when I didn’t go last year but I’m really glad I waited it out and did it this year," she said. "I’m definitely going to do it next year."