Ryan Hamm from Relevant Magazine with Phyllis Freeman from World Vision

On the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, we look at how far we've come—and how much more there is to do. It’s hard to believe it’s been five years since the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. It seems like such a short time ago that we were watching the horrifying footage of suffering, destruction, looting and the disaster-within-a-disaster at the Super Dome. Because such huge catastrophes often have multi-year (or multi-decade) effects, we wanted to find out how the recovery efforts are going on the fifth anniversary of Katrina.

We talked with Phyllis Freeman, the domestic disaster director for World Vision, U.S. programs. Here’s what she had to say about New Orleans then and now, how a community rebuilds and how both government agencies and non-governmental organizations are better prepared for future disasters.

By Sarah Brubaker, Lindenwood University

I have a confession to make: I used to change the channel during child sponsorship commercials. The need was simply too overwhelming. As a high school and then college student, I didn’t have the means to support every one of them. I had heard the statistics that there were millions of starving people and millions of children without parents and millions of people dying of AIDS… and I didn’t have that many hands or dollars. I knew I could not help all of them and didn’t know where to start.

That began to change the summer I went to India.