Atlantik-Brüecke,
based in Germany, has committed $1.1 million to support renovation
of the Lusher Charter School gymnasium facility on the Fortier campus.
The center will be called the "Atlantik-Brücke Community
Resource Center" in recognition of the gift. In addition to athletics,
the building will have space available for community meetings. The
center is expected to open in fall 2006.
"Rebuilding
the former gymnasium is an opportunity to engage and give back to
the community," says Paul Barron, interim provost of Tulane University
and liaison with the Lusher Charter School. "Lusher has always
been a leading light in local education. This work will provide a
space for community members to meet and to play as well as to learn."
The seeds
of the donation were planted decades ago in Scotland, when Tulane
faculty member Barbara Beckman, then a junior in Newcomb College,
spent a year abroad studying botany in Aberdeen, Scotland. Her roommate
then was a young woman from Germany, Beate Lindemann, who is now the
executive vice-chairman of Atlantik-Brücke.
"Barbara
introduced me to the beauty of New Orleans long before the disaster,
and I have been back to New Orleans several times over the years.
After Hurricane Katrina, it was immediately clear to me that I had
to do something to help this city and its people," Lindemann
says. In February the Atlantik-Bry´cke team visited Lusher Charter
School and other sites around New Orleans.
"I
think the creation of the center will be essential not only for the
Lusher School but for strengthening the community as an integrated
center where young people from all walks of life can meet, engage
in sports, talk to each other and network," Walther Leisler Kiep,
honorary chairman of Atlantik-Brücke, explains. In a city fraught
with racial and socioeconomic division, the center will provide a
unique setting where children and adults from widely different backgrounds
unite in a common purpose to learn and grow together.
Atlantik-Brücke,
a private, non-partisan association, was founded in 1952 by Eric M.
Warburg upon his return to Germany after the World War II. Realizing
that America needed to see a more accurate picture of Germany, he
founded Atlantik-Brücke, which means "Atlantic Bridge,"
with other prominent personalities of the time to strengthen understanding
between citizens of Germany, the United States and Canada.
Now the
oldest transatlantic organization in Germany, Atlantik-Brücke's
key programs involve the Young Leaders network, study trips to Germany
for American social studies teachers and journalists, and the Youth
for Understanding Foundation, which provides one-year exchanges for
East German and American minority high school students.
Beate
Lindemann and Walther Kiep were in New Orleans on June 23-24 to meet
with the Lusher School board and other New Orleans dignitaries, as
well as visit the site of the future Atlantik-Brücke Community
Resource Center.
Tulane
partnered with Lusher Elementary and Middle School through the Advocates
for Arts-based education organization to establish a new K-11 charter
school in October 2005, although Tulane and Lusher already had a long
history of mutual support.
Prior to the storm, Lusher was a well-established public school with
a diverse student population. It had the highest academic ranking
of any New Orleans public elementary and middle school and was applying
to the Orleans Parish School Board to become a charter school. After
Hurricane Katrina, the board approved the charter request and also
a request to use the then-vacant Fortier campus to house the Lusher
middle and high schools.
Lusher
Charter School is open to students from the Lusher elementary school
attendance district and qualifying students from throughout Orleans
parish.
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Lusher Charter School
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