Before they went to New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward to help clean out the debris-ridden lots that pervade that side of the city, a group of honors social work students watched at Spike Lee’s critically acclaimed documentary When the Levees Broke.

Unfortunately, the documentary did nothing to prepare the members of Temple’s Alpha Delta Mu chapter, a social work honors society, for what they saw when they arrived in the devastated area.

“When we first went into the Lower Ninth Ward and saw the houses where the levees broke, it looked like it had just happened,” said Sarah Dillow, a senior in the social work program.

“You could tell where there used to be homes there. Some of the places still had addresses, but some just had steps and nothing else.

This was on every block and everywhere you looked. There was devastation everywhere.”

The group of Alpha Delta Mu students spent part of their winter recess in New Orleans, traveling by van as part of a group that included other Temple students and staff who had been previously as part of a church group.

The group had been planning to make this visit to New Orleans since last spring semester, said Amy Eusebio, a senior social work student.

The group had raised a substantial amount of money to help with cleanup efforts and wanted to back that up with its labor, she said.

The group also saw it as a way of letting people know that despite having its annual Mardi Gras celebration, New Orleans was still in crisis, said Sharnisha Wheeler, a senior social work student.

“It seemed like people had forgotten,” she said. “No one paid attention when people had their unemployment benefits terminated. No one had talked about what was still going on down there.”

During their weeklong stay in New Orleans, the students cleaned up gutted houses, talked with residents and saw the Superdome and other places that were shown during the coverage of the initial disaster.

They also saw neighborhoods that weren’t as devastated by the flood and people who had already begun the process of getting back on their feet.

The students said they also got a perspective on some of the things they could face as social workers.

Dillow put together a slide presentation of the trip to New Orleans that was shown during a School of Social Administration alumni conference in March.

In addition to Dillow, Eusebio and Wheeler, the group that went to New Orleans included senior Shayna Hood, Tyson Mott, a junior in criminal justice, social work students Noelle Tobiason, Michelle Mitchell, Jennifer Habeb, Ryan O’Laughlin, Meredith Huber and M.S.W. student Anita Gregory.