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The Broadmoor Project: New Orleans Recovery was an effort initiated in 2006 to work with residents of New Orleans' hard-hit Broadmoor neighborhood in designing and implementing a strategy for post-Katrina neighborhood recovery. Conceptualized and led by then Center senior fellow Doug Ahlers, and hosted by the Belfer Center's Environment and Natural Resources Program, the project enabled Harvard Kennedy School and other Harvard students to put their governance skills into action to help rebuild one of America's great cities. It also provided an opportunity for New Orleans' neighborhood leaders to build on their leadership skills through intensive Kennedy School courses.

With its success, the Broadmoor Project officially ended in 2011. It has lived on, however, as a best practices model for disaster recovery throughout the world

"Domestic terrorism has existed in this country since the beginning, and it has a legal definition. It is essentially the use or threatened use of violence for political change or to effectuate political change through undemocratic processes."

On this week's episode of "Security Mom," Juliette Kayyem sits down with Thad Allen, then the Chief of Staff for the U.S. Coast Guard, to hear about his experience in New Orleans, 10 years after the tragic incidents of Hurricane Katrina. Allen had been sent to New Orleans to try to fix the botched recovery efforts of the national government.

Following Hurricane Katrina, the Belfer Center's Broadmoor Project was developed by then Belfer Center Senior Fellow Doug Ahlers to work with the Broadmoor neighborhood to rebuild the devastated community. Highly successful, Broadmoor is now a model of recovery, almost 90 percent rebuilt, with a new charter school, library, and community center. (See Broadmoor Project.)

With Ahlers vision and leadership, the Broadmoor Project has also helped other disaster-struck communities. Here, Ahlers describes how the Broadmoor model is currently assisting in the recovery of three Chilean communities nearly destroyed by the earthquake and tsunami of 2010. The genesis of the Recupera Chile initiative is described below.

Tom Wooten ’08, author of "We Shall Not Be Moved: Rebuilding Home in the Wake of Katrina," discussed his book during a Wintersession lecture in Sever Hall.

An audio recording of a lecture by Professor Ellis Goldberg at MEI on November 15.

An audio recording of a discussion on November 1 with Ahmad Amara, Palestinian Human Rights Lawyer, and Oren Yiftachel, Professor of political geography, urban planning and public policy at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

An audio recording of Samar Yazbek's book talk on September 21 at Harvard Kennedy School.

We Shall Not Be Moved, released in August 2012, is an account of how five New Orleans neighborhoods rebuilt in the years following Hurricane Katrina. Focusing on recovery efforts in the hard-hit neighborhoods of Broadmoor, Hollygrove, Lakeview, the Lower Ninth Ward, and Village de l'Est, author Tom Wooten, a research fellow with the Belfer Center's Broadmoor Project, tells the story of this rebirth through the eyes, voices, and experiences of residents who refused to give up in the wake of one of the country’s worst disasters.

Five years after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, one stand-out recovery success story is the neighborhood of Broadmoor and its unique collaboration with Harvard Kennedy School through the Belfer Center's "Broadmoor Project." While the determined community continues its renewal today, Broadmoor has become a model of disaster recovery efforts for other neighborhoods, cities, and even countries.