Katrina Update: Saturday, November 5, 2005 From: Peter Schweitzer <peter@plenty.org> Friday night two more Plenty volunteers, Ada Langley and Lilly Trainor, left the Farm in Tennessee headed for Louisiana driving a full-size cargo van loaded up with more supplies that had been requested by groups working in and around New Orleans. This will be Ada's second trip to New Orleans where she had been living in the 9th Ward until 2 weeks before Katrina. They will return to Tennessee on Sunday and then Elaine Langley, RN and Joel Kachinsky will drive the van back down with another load. These supplies had been collected for the Red Cross by a church near Nashville, but the Red Cross has stopped bringing relief supplies into Mississippi and Louisiana so the church was more than happy to give everything to Plenty.  After these runs, the school bus, which is also fully loaded, will go down again. We will continue making deliveries of supplies as long as we have stockpiles and there is a need. Meanwhile, we are making plans with people in the Houma communities in the Bayous southwest of New Orleans and Algiers, Louisiana for a reconstruction project that is being funded through Plenty by the Veterans for Peace and DreamCatchers. The project involves mold abatement, roof and house repair, raising houses on pillars, and the rebuilding of houses that were completely destroyed in these two areas. The goal of the project is to train local folks in the skills while renovating the houses. This way, the trainees will be able to get some of the jobs in the long-term reconstruction work that will be going on for the next several years. On November 30, on the site of the new volunteers camp being set up outside Slidell, Louisiana, there will be a summit meeting of members of grassroots groups that have been working together since right after Katrina struck (Plenty International, Veterans for Peace, Common Ground, United Peace Relief, Food Not Bombs, the United Houma Nation and other interested organizations) to plan for the next phase of hurricane relief and decided how we can all collaborate so that our combined efforts are both helpful and effective. We will post more information about this gathering as we get closer to the date and develop the agenda. Be sure to read the excellent report by recently returned Plenty medical volunteer, Judy Joffee: