By James Cardo

For The Beachcomber

New Orleans was ravaged by hurricane-driven floods in the late summer of 2005. While much of the city has recovered a semblance of its former vitality, thousands upon thousands of residents are still struggling to rebuild their lives.

Their plight has faded in the memories of their fellow Americans.

Inspiring others to act to help the people of Louisiana requires a resonance, an empathetic response. If people can feel what their fellow humans in New Orleans have experienced, the desire to help becomes almost overwhelming.

One of the most effective ways to build such a bond among people is by sharing stories, and the arts provide a vehicle for those stories that can inspire, motivate and move those who see and hear them.

In 2007, two accomplished Broadway veterans, producer James Lecesne and choreographer Gerry McIntyre, traveled to New Orleans in the wake of the flooding. They were stunned by what they saw. Unable to build houses or repair streets, the two decided to help in ways that they knew, and so they assembled a cast of New Orleans’ youth from the Ninth Ward to perform a hit Broadway musical that echoed the disaster in southern Louisiana and Mississippi. “Once on This Island” opened to acclaim in New Orleans, and the young performers shared their stories on stage with a conviction that is impossible to ignore.

Fortunately for the rest of us, noted documentary filmmaker Hilla Medalia heard of the undertaking and filmed the production’s entire process from start to finish. Her moving film “After the Storm” will have its Northwest premiere at the Vashon Theatre on Jan. 18.

Thanks to local organizers, Medalia will be in attendance at the premiere, and she will speak with the audience after the screening. Medalia will be joined by a contingent of current and alumni students from The Harbor School. Inspired to help others, The Harbor School has sent students to New Orleans three times in the past, and its current eighth grade is preparing for a fourth trip this May to experience the lives and culture of the city and to help as best they can the many people who are in need of support from all of us.

In a clever bit of filmmaking, Medalia provided each of the cast members of the musical with cameras to take home. The drama and emotion of the rehearsals pale in comparison to the stories of these children and their families who are still trying to rebuild their lives. For those unable to journey to New Orleans, “After the Storm” provides a window into the hearts of people who suffered great hardship.

Those stories are assured to resonate deeply with the film’s audience, and this event will give the people of the Pacific Northwest a direct opportunity to help the people of New Orleans. The act of sending Island youth to help the youth and families of Louisiana is a real and established connection. Those Harbor School eighth-graders will, in turn, have their own stories to share, and those echoes of service and goodwill will benefit all of us.

The Harbor School organized its first trip to New Orleans in 2005 before the storms. Though they were logistically unable to return to the city in the spring of 2006, they were able to travel to Louisiana in 2007 and 2008. While there, these Island students have worked side by side with the people of the stricken city and seen firsthand the terrible toll that was left behind in property damage, crushed hopes and shattered lives.

The students have assisted at the immense and busy Second Harvest Food Bank, dug out sand-clogged storm drains right beside the London Canal levee break, rebuilt and replanted a community garden in the Gentilly Woods neighborhood and cleared copious weeds that dangerously obstruct visibility in semi-abandoned neighborhoods.

This year, the class has additional plans to contact students in New Orleans schools to hear their stories, to help the community center that staged “Once on This Island” and to rekindle some of the connections made in years past by other Harbor School classes.

Clearly the arts do make a real and tangible impact on our lives, and they inspire us to help others in ways that also help ourselves.

— James Cardo teaches at The Harbor School.

“After the Storm” will be shown at Vashon Theatre at 7 p.m. Monday, Jan. 18 (Martin Luther King Day), as a benefit for The Harbor School’s travel study trip to New Orleans. Tickets, $7, are on sale now at Vashon Bookshop. The director, Hilla Medalia, will attend the screening and answer questions. Vashon Film Society will host additional screenings at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 19, and 8 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 20; Medalia will not be at those screenings. Admission on Jan. 19 and 20 is by donation; proceeds will go to Vashon Theatre.