After 11 months of operation on Loyola’s campus, the Katrina relief office that Jocelyn Sideco ran in the basement of the Danna Center is now closed.

Sideco, an employee of the Jesuits of the New Orleans Province, left the satellite office, which was open much longer than intended, at the end of July.

“From beginning to end, it wasn’t supposed to be a long-term thing,” she said.

As the pastoral associate for relief ministries, Sideco was acting as an intermediary for volunteer groups looking to come to New Orleans to rebuild. She matched volunteer groups with agencies looking for help and provided housing, often in empty dorms in Buddig Hall, while they stayed in the city.

“Jocelyn provided not only the work and the housing, but she also gave us meals, the cultural experience, a pretty extensive tour – she’s really irreplaceable for us,” Sam Deitch said. Deitch is the volunteer coordinator at St. Joseph’s Preparatory School, a high school that used Sideco’s help for all four trips that they made to New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina.

Sideco left to focus her work on Contemplatives in Action, an urban retreat center, in the Lower Garden District. The center provides a location for groups like local non-profits to hold retreats when they cannot afford big trips.

Now that the office is closed, the Jesuits of the New Orleans Province will continue to help volunteers find work on a much smaller level.

“The troubleshooting that the office did before is just not what we’re offering anymore,” Sideco said. Mostly, they’ll just keep an updated list of agencies in need, she said.

But student interns from Loyola gained invaluable experience working in the office, Sideco said. Rob Harman, sociology junior; Jamie Broussard, sociology sophomore; and Caitlin Dreger, A’08, all helped Sideco out in the office and are still active in social justice work, she said.

For students interested in rebuilding in New Orleans, Sideco said, there are still opportunities everywhere.

“There’s a ton of different opportunities around the city,” she said. “Agencies are really having a difficult time getting local volunteers.”

She suggested contacting [email protected] as well as the Loyola University Community Action Program.

St. Joseph’s plans to keep coming to New Orleans as well.

“We’ve made some connections in the time we’ve been there, like the University of New Orleans for housing,” Deitch said.

“We still feel like there’s a need, and we still feel like we can do it,” he said.

Katie Urbaszewski can be reached at [email protected].