New Orleans: Culture & Environmental Exploration

Fly with your group to the Crescent City to begin your new adventure of culture, music, and food! Your Global Works leaders will be eagerly awaiting your arrival at the Louis Armstrong Airport and will drive you back to your lodging. As you settle in, you will start to learn about what makes New Orleans so unique. We will do orientation activities and get prepped for what the week ahead holds.

We’ll get a taste of the New Orleans flavor today in the French Quarter. Start the morning learning about the vast history of this southern city as we take a guided tour of the city center. After taking in the unmatched local architecture and NOLA flare, we’ll stop in for world-famous beignets at Café Du Monde. In the afternoon, we will expand our New Orleans knowledge at a local museum while learning about what makes this city feel like nowhere else in the US – Mardi Gras, Second Lines, and more.

After Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans was faced with an enormous challenge of recovery. Due to the community’s unwavering commitment to the city they love, New Orleans continues to persevere in mending itself, and we will have the opportunity to join this effort. Our projects will take an environmental focus as we work diligently in New Orleans City Park and the surrounding wetlands area, all while getting to know local community members. Given the rapid coastal erosion of Louisiana, we will help provide a habitat for wildlife restoration and a buffer from imminent hurricanes.

Get a chance to leave the urban surroundings as you drive into the Louisiana swamps. Take an eye-opening boat tour of this wild scenery as snakes and alligators swim by you. Next, we head over to the Whitney Plantation to explore the complex history of southern plantations.

Pack up and depart this city that you’ve learned to love over the past week. Though it is sad to leave, you will have many new tales to tell of the New Orleans people and culture that made your experience memorable!