Just over two dozen Sacred Heart University students and staff found themselves in front of the University Commons at three in the morning, a full week and a half before the rest of campus returned from the comfort of their homes.  

Why, do you ask, would they give up the first week of freedom before classes and homework, papers and tests? 

This group was specially selected from a large group of applicants to go on Sacred Heart's annual mission trip to New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, to help fix the devastating damage caused by Hurricane Katrina seven years ago.

Although this horrible natural disaster occurred over seven years ago, its effects are still felt every day by people on the Gulf Coast. Houses are still abandoned, buildings destroyed, and many families are still living in what were supposed to be temporary dwellings.  

Sacred Heart has been sending a delegation every year for the past six years, and each and every time a delegation comes back there are similar reactions from its members.  

Junior Natasha Sousa is one such member who went on the trip this year.  

"I've been on Habitat trips before. I go on one every spring break," Sousa said.  "But this was different. I made a connection with people down there that is unlike anything I have ever experienced."

Another Sacred Heart junior, Mike Wright, also reflected on his time down in New Orleans. 

"It was definitely a life-changing experience," Wright said.  "Knowing that these people are still living in these conditions all these years later is unbelievable. But despite their situations, they are some of the happiest, most down-to-earth people I have ever had the opportunity to work beside."

Two seniors from Sacred Heart also found themselves in the New Orleans area with the Mississippi Matters Mission Trip, but for a slightly different reason.  

Ray Palmer and Bill Romaniello went down with the group to work with their professor on a documentary about the rebuilding of the levees.  

As media studies and graphic design majors, their jobs were to capture meaningful photos and videos of the work that is still being done in the Gulf Coast area.    

They had a slightly different goal in mind than the participants of the Mission Trip, focusing more so on the actual levees. However, while reflecting on their experiences behind the lens, both students agree that it was a life-changing experience and definitely not what they expected.  

As so many who have participated on this trip will tell you, this is such a different experience from any other trip students can go on through Sacred Heart University's Volunteer Programs.  

It is an opportunity to look at a piece of our country, our home that is not simply consumed by poverty, but that was thrown into horrible conditions by a harsh act of nature.  It opens eyes to how long change and restoration actually takes and it reminds us all that in the most severe and drastic of circumstances there is always the opportunity to aid, to change, and to rebuild.