A delegation of prominent Hollywood women - including New Orleans native and Children's Defense Fund (CDF) Board Member Reese Witherspoon, Jennifer Garner, Cicely Tyson, Regina King and Deborah Santana - will travel to New Orleans to learn about the acute mental health, health and education needs of children traumatized by Hurricane Katrina more than eight months ago.
More than a dozen prominent entertainment, cultural, media, and community leaders, including three Los Angeles CDF board members Carol Biondi, Ruth-Ann Huvane and Katie McGrath, will join CDF President and Founder Marian Wright Edelman in New Orleans on Monday, May 8.
The delegation will see New Orleans' devastated Lower Ninth Ward; visit a trailer camp to talk with displaced families about their living conditions; and meet with children and their parents at the opening of the first of thirteen planned Louisiana CDF Freedom SchoolsSM sites.
The group also will visit a mobile medical van and clinic to talk with doctors about the special health and mental health needs of Gulf Coast children; and meet with women leaders of the Gulf Coast states, including Women of the Storm, regarding the continuing struggles of Katrina families and communities.
The new CDF Freedom School site at 1542 North Broad Street is the first of thirteen CDF Freedom Schools sites planned for Louisiana.
The CDF Freedom Schools program provides a model curriculum for reading enrichment, conflict resolution, parent engagement, youth leadership development, and cultural enrichment.
The Louisiana schools also will provide mental health and health services.
CDF currently serves 600 children affected by Hurricane Katrina at nine CDF Freedom Schools sites in Mississippi that also provide parents and children learning advocates with Mississippi public schools and comprehensive tax and benefit outreach help.
On April 4th, the Children's Defense Fund published Katrina's Children: A Call to Conscience and Action, a report describing the growing mental health, health and education crises of children in the Gulf Coast and a nine-point action plan on what can and must be done to help them.
Read more from this post.
