McCartney: “Resources just had not come this way.” Photograph: Lee Celano

Having worked in some of the more impoverished parts of Africa as a Peace Corp volunteer, Liz McCartney knows about difficult living conditions. But she was unprepared for the devastation in St. Bernard Parish, adjacent to New Orleans, when she and her boyfriend, Zack Rosenberg, arrived as volunteers in February 2006, six months after Hurricane Katrina. In this lower-middle-class community of approximately 60,000 residents, virtually all of the homes were uninhabitable.

McCartney and Rosenberg decided to leave their jobs in Washington, D.C.—she as executive director of the Capitol Hill Computer Corner, an after-school and summer learning program for disadvantaged children, he as a criminal defense lawyer—and they returned to Louisiana four months later to start the St. Bernard Project, a nonprofit organization that rebuilds houses for families who cannot afford to themselves. “We thought there would be all this forward progress when we came back. We thought we would be helping people buy furniture and appliances,” says McCartney, but “resources just had not come this way.” What the two lacked in construction skills, they made up for with expertise in nonprofit management and with determination.

McCartney is blond, pony-tailed, and willowy and speaks gently but firmly. She is comfortable (now) wearing a tool belt but is more likely to be wielding a cell phone. While Rosenberg has focused his efforts on partnering with community groups, she has concentrated on fundraising and has brought in $2.7 million from United Way, the GE Foundation, Shell Oil, and other public and private charities. Two years after they started the St. Bernard Project, more than 7,000 volunteers, recruited from church groups, universities, and civic associations nationwide, have helped turn it into one of the most important forces driving recovery in the parish. The project employs six office staff and a couple of dozen AmeriCorps workers who supervise and instruct the largely unskilled volunteers. In about three months, a team of volunteers can rebuild a house for $12,000. So far, 145 renovations have been completed.

“If something is wrong in the world,” says McCartney, “we have to fix it.” She hopes to expand the St. Bernard Project’s mission and to begin providing affordable rental housing and mental health services to local residents.

Kate Moran is a reporter for the New Orleans Times-Picayune.