EMPLOYEE HIGHLIGHT
City staffer named to Gambit's 40 under 40

A young, dedicated City employee is standing out in New Orleans for his immeasurable contribution to helping government safely evacuate citizens during the threat of a hurricane: Robert X. Fogarty. This week, Gambit highlighted Robert as the founder of Evacuteer.org in its annual "40 under 40" issue, a publication saluting young New Orleanians for their accomplishments and future promise in the city.

Robert began his commitment to New Orleans in 2007 spending two years as an AmeriCorps VISTA member working for the City as Mayor Nagin's Volunteers in Government Program coordinator. Not only did he recruit volunteers to help execute City events and to assist departments, he also collected people willing to help out during our city's most stressful time: hurricane season. Through his experience as the volunteer coordinator, Robert created Evacuteer.org.

Evacuteer.org, although it has always been highlighted by the City of New Orleans as a vital tool during hurricane season, is gaining city-wide and even national and international recognition. More than just a web site, the Evacuteer program collects, organizes, and trains volunteers to help the City of New Orleans execute its City Assisted Evacuation Plan (CAEP) in case the call to evacuate is made.

How critical are volunteers to CAEP? For the evacuation of Hurricane Gustav, Robert, in coordination with other local volunteer organizations, collected 219 volunteers to assist the CAEP, which evacuated over 18,000 citizens without their own way to leave the city safely.

"Volunteers are a vital part of the evacuation process," says Lt. Colonel Jerry Sneed, Director of Homeland Security and the Office of Emergency Preparedness. "We could not have done what we did without them."

Learning from his experience in September 2008, Robert realized the need for an organized effort across the board to ensure volunteers would continue to be a part of the city's disaster plan. He asked himself "How can we do this better?" The solution: Evacuteer.org.

This year, Evacuteer.org recruited and trained an unprecedented amount of evacuteers, 426, during the 2009 hurricane season, holding training sessions in partnership with the Red Cross nearly every Saturday this summer.

Robert's long-term goal is to bring the Evacuteer.org model of socially innovative citizen engagement during emergencies to other cities domestically and internationally. "If we accept the premise that we learn from past experience New Orleans is positioned to export so many ideas we've learned during this recovery." he says. "I hope Evacuteer.org can be a small part of that."