Kennedy School Boosts Community Leadership in New Orleans City's Neighborhood Leaders Build Skills at Harvard's School of Government

s part of an ongoing effort of support to the city of New Orleans, the Kennedy School of Government will host community leaders from struggling neighborhoods for intensive training in leadership and management through the School’s Executive Education Programs this spring and summer.

The training continues the Kennedy School’s commitment to New Orleans begun through the “Kennedy School - Broadmoor Project,” an effort initiated in 2006 to assist residents of New Orleans’ hard-hit Broadmoor neighborhood in designing a strategy for neighborhood recovery. The project was begun by Doug Ahlers, a New Orleans resident and a fellow at the Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, which hosts the Broadmoor Project.

As New Orleans continues to struggle with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, which devastated the city in August of 2005, many neighborhood leaders have been spearheading the recovery and rebuilding process. Beginning this week (mid-May), leaders from neighborhoods such as the Lower Ninth Ward, Broadmoor, and Mid-City, as well as the Louisiana Redevelopment Authority and New Orleans City Council, will come to Cambridge to take part in the Kennedy School’s Executive Education Programs, with support from Shell Exploration & Production Company.