Candice Barwick was 10 years old when her school disappeared.
Unfortunately, such large-scale vanishing acts were all too common in August 2005, the month Hurricane Katrina demolished Barwick’s alma mater, Arabi Elementary, in just days.
LSU Community Bound, a program dedicated to giving back to the East Baton Rouge Parish public school system, partnered with the St. Bernard Project on Saturday as they reconstructed sites damaged by Katrina and touched up schools in the Baton Rouge area in commemoration of the storm’s 10th anniversary.
The event boasted nearly 900 volunteers — the largest number in Community Bound history.
Volunteers from St. Bernard Parish established the St. Bernard Project following Katrina’s devastation to provide aid to areas ravaged by the storm. Since its establishment in 2005, the project has renovated more than 900 homes over the past decade and helped restore Barwick’s hometown of Chalmette.
Volunteer LSU, the organization that hosts Community Bound, originated as an effort of 40 volunteers to help restore Baton Rouge after Katrina. Today, its outreach includes 43,000 students and 6,000 school employees.
Community Bound volunteers worked in Baton Rouge on Saturday, while St. Bernard Project volunteers headed to New Orleans.
Barwick was one of the 789 volunteers in Baton Rouge. As subcommittee chair of marketing and communications for Volunteer LSU, Barwick led groups of mostly incoming freshmen to work at Tara High School.
She said she wanted to give back to her college community like volunteers from the St. Bernard Project did when they helped out her hometown.
“I think it’s our role,” Barwick said. “We need to give back. We’re given so much in life. It doesn’t take much for us to give back and help out.”
Though the bulk of the Community Bound group went to Baton Rouge locations, about 110 students and leaders volunteered in New Orleans. They prepared seven uninhabitable homes for renovations spearheaded by the St. Bernard Project, set to take place in various New Orleans locations.
Kinesiology junior Shyrece Celestine painted ceilings and doors, wiped down walls and dug out grout between tiles for Site 7, the site of an uninhabitable home, to prepare it for the final steps of the reconstruction process.
Celestine said her team of students, who were in elementary school when the hurricane struck the city, gained fresh insight on the atmosphere of New Orleans after the storm.
“They got a new perspective because they’ve never seen what it was really like in New Orleans and what people had to go through,” Celestine said.
Celestine was one of the many Ogden Honors students who worked the event. Jonathan Earle, dean of the Ogden Honors College, said the event is popular with his students.
He said freshman year of the honors program is devoted to the type of community service sorely needed in East Baton Rouge schools.
“East Baton Rouge Parish is really underfunded,” Earle said. “A lot of people send their kids to private schools, and [public schools] get worse and worse.”
LSU President F. King Alexander, who volunteered at Tara High, joined Earle in his efforts.
Alexander said Community Bound reflects students’ attitudes toward service.
“It shows the community what this generation can do,” Alexander said.

Gallery • 5 Photos

Ari Ross

Chemical engineering junior Jose Sylve steps off the bus ready for work on Saturday, Aug. 22, 2015, during Community Bound at Tara High School.