Laura B. Crochet, LANO New Orleans

On August 28th, 2005, we had a cool city, an alive, vibrant city. The city was rich in technology, it was rich in non-profits -- and we were moving forward in so many venues.Then the lights went out, and it was the Dark Ages here.

Our city government went down. Our nonprofits went down. Everything went down. Nobody knew what to do.

In St. Bernard Parish, 25 feet of water in rose in 23 minutes -- not even the length of a sitcom. Slab houses bobbed like ice cubes along the street and floated down 3 blocks. Months later, the house's curtains are still in the windows, dancing; kids’ papers are still on the refrigerator. Like Dorothy in Wizard of Oz, I had to touch those houses, because I had a hard time believing that a house had been picked up and sat down like that.

We live in a strange land.

I came into Orleans Parish working with FEMA. I came with architects, engineers, and planners -- from all over the United States and some even from Europe as well. We wrote and planned recovery projects for the City of New Orleans worth billions of dollars. Many of these of projects are still waiting for federal funding.

Of course, you want government to come in and lift you up. But government is a dinosaur. It doesn't move very fast. They're going to move as fast as they can, they're going to build partnerships, but it's the local nonprofits that have to rise up and do things. That's what has saved this city: the people on the ground going into neighborhoods and asking, "What do we need to do to help?"

So the projects are being done through public and private ventures. There is a vitality and vigor occurring today not present before the storm. The people who are here are suddenly saying, “I've had this dream for a long time and I'm going to follow it. I've thought about having a nonprofit and never thought about acting on it. Can you help me with this?”

A lot of our nonprofits face similar challenges. They have taken buildings in Lower 9 -- the Lower 9th Ward, where a barge that punched through a levee stayed on the street for months and created an organization like NENA. Anyone who went in went in did as a commando. At the Community Center of St. Bernard, a community project that is still working, is working out of a building that doesn't have ceiling tiles. But the St. Bernard people are fine with that -- because that's what their homes look like. All but 5 of the homes in the parish were devastated. They lost all of their churches, all of their schools, all of their libraries.

The only reason the community is going to come back is that nonprofits, faith-based groups, schools, colleges, people like you, have come in.

We have people coming into 2nd careers: young people, YURPies (Young Urban Recovery Professionals). We're tapping into that enthusiasm, that energy to help grow our organizations. And we're finding more people to pour their energy into the city. People are coming on their spring breaks --painting, demolishing things, helping families build homes. It's a tremendous operation, going on 24/7.

It's on the college campuses; it's on the radar of churches, this renaissance. It's on the country’s radar. We think it's going to feed up, like it did in Europe -- it's going to feed up and do some things for the whole country. Our people are passionate, and they're proud. They'll keep moving forward.

And that's not a recovery. It's a renaissance.