A clammy atmosphere surrounded the sizzling sounds of char-boiled oysters, the smells of fried catfish and shrimp po’ boys and the mucky fingers and mouths devouring the crawfish.

More than 300 people gathered for the kick-off of the sixth annual Plaquemines Parish Seafood Festival in Belle Chasse, La., where locals hoped to remember tradition and take their minds off of the oil spill that has changed their future.

The festival, which continues through Sunday, features various activities, including carnival rides, a pageant and helicopter trips over the Mississippi River. Local restaurants will offer seafood and other specialty dishes; there will be appearances by local bands, as well as the New Orleans Honey Bees dance team. The event was created in 2004 to bring recognition to the seafood and fishing industry that has dominated so much of the culture in Plaquemines Parish, where, in Venice, the most southern part of the parish, some of the best seafood in the country can be found.

Despite the Gulf of Mexico oil spill that has challenged the seafood industry in Louisiana, coordinator Keith Hinkley never considered holding off on the tradition.

“If I would have said ‘Let’s not have this,’ I would have been turning my back on the heritage of this parish,” Hinkley said.

Many local restaurant owners came out to show the public that the seafood industry is still kicking.

In a black apron cooking charbroiled oysters over a scorching hot grill, Niko Tesvicha, a member of the local Croatian American Society, said he wanted people to come out and have a good time.

“Yeah, there’s an oil spill out there, but everybody we got oysters. We want people to come out and eat,” said Tesvicha, who is also a local salesman.

While his mind is off the oil spill for now, he knows the potential consequences that lie ahead.

“There are Croatian people who have been employed by fishing for over 40 years,” he said. “I’m lucky I went out and found another trade, but my dad is still out there on the boat.”

While the festival usually donates part of the $5 entry fee to the Children’s Hospital or American Cancer Society, this year it has partnered with Catholic Charities Archdiocese of New Orleans to assist fisherman in Plaquemines Parish.

Hinkley said the funds will be used for business, as well as personal needs.

“If they have to pay an electric bill, a heat or a car note, we are the ones that will have to help them build their lives,” he said.

Those not personally affected by the oil spill were still impacted in some way. like New Orleans resident Beckie Sarbeck, 31, who brought her fiancé, Jason Buff, 31, and his family out to the festival.

Sarback, a first-timer of the festival, grew up in Plaquemines Parish, where seafood played a big role in her everyday meals. She even plans to have an oyster bar at her wedding reception.

“It’s a big part of our wedding,” she said. “The only thing we are really concerned about is the food.”

While Sarback remains hopeful, she thinks that people have not yet grasped the long-term effects of the oil spill.

“This really could be a bigger deal than Katrina because it’s affecting a way of life,” she said.

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To most of her neighbors in the Ninth Ward, Kelly Gaus is often referred to as the woman with the dogs.

To the 56 four-legged animals she has saved in the past year, she is a redeemer.

Gaus, a law student at Tulane University in New Orleans, is the founder and director of Dogs of the 9th Ward, which rescues stray, abandoned and feral dogs in the devastated, storm-stricken community.

“I always thought it would be really great if I could do something for the incredible number of strays we have here,” she said. “I always sort of assumed that I couldn’t.”

She was wrong.

This month, Dogs of the 9th Ward celebrated its first anniversary. Gaus said the inspiration for the organization came in the form of a dog that she found and initially mistook for a gargoyle statue.

She got the injured dog veterinary care and sought a permanent home for her. Ultimately, she decided to keep the hairless pit bull she named Pauline, after the street in the Ninth Ward where she was found.

“I had no idea how I could afford to help her, but I knew I couldn’t just leave her there,” Gaus said.

News of Pauline’s rescue spread throughout the community and Gaus said the response was overwhelming.

“People in the community reached out and really helped me,” she said. “They gave so much money and support that it actually more than covered her vet bills.”

Gaus began to toy with the idea of rescuing other dogs. Only a week later, a 5-month-old puppy followed her home. Homer, whom she is still hoping to adopt out, became the second 9th Ward dog.

“Once I started, it was hard to stop,” she said with a smile.

Gaus is proud of what the organization has accomplished so far, but is now focused on its future.

She said the organization is in a transitional state.

“The organization is continuing to grow, but we need to back up a little bit and become a more structured organization than we are right now,” she said.

She hopes to secure nonprofit status from the Internal Revenue Service and develop more structured roles within the group.

“I see the organization continuing to grow at the same rate as it has, but right now we don’t have the internal structure in place for it to do that,” she said. “We’re going to shift the focus for the next few months so we can continue to rescue over 100 dogs this next year.”

For Gaus, her happiness has been tempered with sorrow.

When Pauline, the pit bull she rescued, died unexpectedly this month from an autoimmune disorder, Gaus thought about ending the rescues.

She said she then realized she couldn’t.

“Every time I think these things, I realize that I can’t stop because the fosters are all there and they’re depending on you finding them a home,” she said. “Sometimes it’s fun, sometimes it’s difficult, but it’s what I do and what I’ll continue to do.”

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Kat Riggins and her boyfriend Jerome Gross, both 30, had never been to the New Orleans Wine & Food Experience. But less than an hour after arriving on Royal Street Thursday, they were happy they’d decided to go.

“We haven’t been many places yet but everything we’ve had has been great,” said Riggins as she enjoyed a plate of beef and pasta at Latrobe’s at the corner of Royal and Conti streets. Riggins, a local bar manager, recently moved to the city from Miami. The Wine & Food Festival was her first event in New Orleans.

“It’s really nice,” she said as she took another bite of roast beef. “I’m having a good time.”

Families, couples and food lovers braved the New Orleans heat to sample hundreds of wines, enjoy live jazz performances and taste food from some of the best restaurants in New Orleans at the 19th Annual New Orleans Wine & Food Experience. The festival, which includes wine auctions, wine dinners and a day of seminars, lasted for five days beginning May 26.

Gold banners with green wine bottles and “NOWFE” written in purple letters led wine lovers into narrow antique shops, art galleries and even a gun store, all of which transformed into troves of wine and delectable food.

The street was a sea of half-filled glasses of white and red wine, and small plates topped with everything from charbroiled mussels to cured duck breast on focaccia. About halfway through the festivities, the street was filled with walking grapes — men in togas and women with vines wrapped around their bodies. The Krewe of Cork, a popular Mardi Gras parade participant, gave festival goers a show with their wine-inspired costumes, brass band and — of course — plenty of wine.

The Royal Street Stroll offered wine lovers a way to sample different brands and also gave local businesses a chance to show off their goods for the people who streamed in and out of their stores.

Bourbon French Parfums was packed with patrons sampling wine while browsing the shelves of flowery perfumes and delicate perfume bottles. Owner Mary Behlar beamed as she watched potential customers taking in the scents of chamomile, honeysuckle and a special concoction called “voodoo love.”

Among those participating in the festivities was Jamie Lauren, a contestant from season five of Bravo’s “Top Chef.” Lauren, who was accompanied by her sous chef and a friend, was surprised to be considered a celebrity, even though she didn’t win the show.

“I’m just excited to be in New Orleans and to be here,” she said as she took in a performer balancing motionless on a ladder.

The stroll officially ended at 8:30 p.m., but the crowd was having too much fun to notice, and many walked one block over to the permanent party on Bourbon Street.

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From left, Evelyn Alexis, 75, Dawn Williams, 52, and Leena Mcfield, 78, are part of the sizable Honduran community in New Orleans. "I had a hard time after coming back from Katrina," Evelyn Alexis said. "Your life has been shattered, everything and all the people that you know. But everything that I had was in New Orleans, and we needed to work our way to get back home." (Taylar Barrington/NYT Institute)

“I have friends who come down all the time, and they always talk about my mother’s cooking,” said Franz McField. “She does red beans and rice, which is native New Orleans foods, but when she adds her mutant pepper and little spices, it just kicks it up to another level.”

The Alexis family is a small part of the sizable Honduran community in New Orleans.

New Orleans has the third largest concentration of Hondurans in the U.S., dating back to the 1950s, when they began flooding into the Big Easy after joblessness swept their country due to the decline of the fruit industry. New Orleans was a natural migration point for immigrants from Central America, only 1,000 miles away. When Hurricane Mitch hit Honduras in 1998, the community in New Orleans grew even larger with people fleeing the storm. When Hurricane Katrina pummeled New Orleans in 2005, most of the Honduran community decided to rebuild instead of fleeing to their homeland.

Hurricane Katrina hit Evelyn Alexis especially hard, killing both of her brothers and her husband of 40 years. She fled to Texas with her son and contemplated staying there to avoid her gloomy new reality.

“I had a hard time after coming back from Katrina,” she said. “Your life has been shattered, everything and all the people that you know. My life has changed forever. My husband and I —that’s gone. Gone. But everything that I had was in New Orleans, and we needed to work our way to get back home.”

Evelyn Alexis, like many other Hondurans who immigrated to New Orleans, made the city her home. Even after Katrina, a majority of New Orleans’ Hondurans returned to rebuild and start over.

Dawn Williams, Alexis’ niece, was born in Honduras and moved to New Orleans at the age of 6. Although she is bilingual, her accent is inconspicuous unless she is in a room filled with her older relatives. She thinks of America as her home and says although she enjoys visiting Honduras, as she did a few years ago, she feels like a tourist there.

“We are very Americanized,” she said. “We were all down there on a trip a few years ago, and for us it was so amazing. We felt like tourists because we didn’t know a lot of the people there.”

Many Honduran-Americans feel the same; a significant number of them have been in New Orleans for over 80 years, and have become assimilated in American culture.

According to the Census Bureau’s 2008 American Community Survey, more than 4,500 Central Americans make New Orleans their home. There are no statistics available specifically for the Honduran population in New Orleans, but Ted Heken, chairman of the Black and Latin Studies Department at Baruch College who received a doctorate in Latin American Studies at Tulane University, estimates that most Central Americans in New Orleans have roots in Honduras.

New Orleans celebrates its Honduran community by supporting a Honduran Independence Day parade each year. New Orleans culture has also rubbed off on Honduras. Over the years that parade has a taken a decidedly New Orleans style, with participants dressed in Mardi Gras costumes and dancing to music with zydeco sounds.

“It’s almost like they transformed the culture from there and brought it here and continued it as well,” said McField, Williams’ cousin.

Angel, an illegal immigrant from Honduras, came to New Orleans specifically because of its ties to his homeland. His last name is being withheld because of his immigration status. He speaks very little English, but is determined to fulfill his dream of making enough money to bring his family to live with him in the U.S.

He moved from Honduras to New Orleans in October 2005 in search of work after Katrina. He planned to go back to Honduras, but never went back.

“I wanted to make money and send it back to my family,” he said, mainly in Spanish. “I was not going to stay here, but now I am a leader at my church and so many youth look up to me.”

One reason the community in New Orleans is unique is because there are few Honduran communities. Most of them are dispersed throughout the city.

“That group is mostly a suburbanized group and roughly middle class,” said Heken. “There is no defined Honduran neighborhood. They have been in New Orleans for such a long time and have assimilated within the culture and no longer need that ethnic enclave.”

Franz McField has his own opinions about why Honduran communities never established themselves as an enclosed community in New Orleans, while other Latino groups have very specific areas where they reside.

“I think you often times get a lot of immigrants together, living in a community together,” he said. “I think they get lost to a certain degree into their difference and separation from the general population. “I think these guys (Hondurans) saw what was out there and they weren’t going to get stuck together all the time and not really exposing themselves to the things that were out there.”

Although members of the Honduran community do not live in proximity to each other, they still maintain their cultural ties. Floyd McField, who is Williams’s uncle, and Lenna McField’s husband, watch soccer games together every Sunday afternoon in a nearby park, where many of the participants are Honduran. Alexis attends church every Sunday, where the members come from several Latino countries, including Honduras.

“Hondurans are united with other Latinos by language and a shared sense of Hispanic ethnicity,” said Richard Campanella, lead professor of geography at Tulane University.

Honduran-American families also put a strong emphasis on education.

“In our family it’s not if you are going to college, it’s where you are going to college,” said Williams, who has embraced that idea. Everyone in her family, with the exception of her parents, has graduated from college. Williams herself has three masters degrees and a doctorate.

Lenna McField, Williams’s aunt, migrated to the U.S. because of her husband’s job as a merchant seaman, but also because of the educational opportunities in America.

“They could have got a good education in Honduras, but everything just would have been in Spanish,” she said. “America was the best place for the children.”

Campanella said Hondurans are still coming to New Orleans because there is a strong local job market, even during a recession. He also said the presence of a Honduran community here and the city’s similarities to Honduras also make the place attractive. The humid, tropical climate and the greenery are just some of the similarities between the two.

“Here in New Orleans it just reminds us so much of home,” Lenna McField said.

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Sharon Jasper, 60, stands Monday afternoon near a fenced section of what used to be St. Bernard Public housing in New Orleans. In 2005, Jasper was forced to relocate after the community was devastated by Hurricane Katrina. (Thaisi H. Da Silva/NYT Institute)

After she was forced out by Hurricane Katrina, Sharon Jasper was certain she would be able to return to her home on a second-floor landing in the St. Bernard public housing project in Mid-City.

But on Monday, she stood at the front gate of what remains of St. Bernard, with its discolored brick and boarded windows. Her old apartment had been torn down, replaced by pristine townhomes with shaded balconies and budding trees, the first phase of a new Columbia Parc complex.

This isn’t the home Jasper knew. To her, it’s a symbol of how her city forgot her.

“We just knew we were going back,” Jasper said. “We hadn’t been evicted. We were still leaseholders. The buildings could have been revitalized, so why shouldn’t we go back?”

Jasper, who now lives in a duplex on Bruxelles Street, said she misses the cohesion of her old community. She is one of thousands of former residents of New Orleans’ “Big Four” low income complexes — St. Bernard, C.J. Peete, Lafitte and B.W. Cooper, all of which are being redeveloped into mixed-income communities. Displaced by the hurricane, some former tenants are now weathering the tempest of redevelopment.

After Katrina, city officials undertook extensive urban renovation to replace the barracks-style complexes built in the 1940s. Despite much public outcry, City Council members voted unanimously in 2007 to raze the Big Four. Replacing them are low-rise townhouses and garden apartments where low-income residents, market-rate tenants and private homeowners live side by side.

Council members believed years of neglect and mismanagement led to a failed social experiment in public housing.

About 4,600 low-income apartment units in the four projects are being replaced by about 4,000 modern apartments being built in phases. However, only about 1,000 units will be available for low-income residents. Tenants who were displaced, like Jasper, must apply to live in the townhouses if they want to return.

Reactions from residents and housing experts reveal a cross-section of realities for the New Orleans working class. Some have had to find new homes in an already bleak housing market, exacerbated by the lack of affordable housing following Katrina. For others, the change has brought benefits: brand new facilities and opportunities for lower rent.

Samuel Johnson, 31, moved into Columbia Parc after his rent skyrocketed after Katrina.

“Everywhere else is still charging an arm and a leg,” said Johnson, who had not been in public housing previously. “Where I stayed before, I was paying $905 for a two-bedroom, and I’m paying $764 over here.”

Then there are people like Isaac Johnson, 90, who has moved into a new Columbia Parc unit. He lived in St. Bernard for more than 50 years and, like many of his neighbors, had low rent and free utilities.

Although he said the new apartments are “beautiful,” and that he enjoys the family activities, Johnson now pays more for his new apartment. This has presented a financial burden he’s not used to shouldering. Sometimes, he says, he has to go to his daughter to help make ends meet.

“I’m on a fixed income,” he said. “I only get about $600 a month. After paying rent, utilities and insurance, there’s nothing left.”

Proponents of the new housing believe it helps eliminate blight, improves a community’s economic growth and, through effective management and resident involvement, can prevent drug use and violence.

Andreanecia Morris, director of public affairs and community development at Providence Community Housing, said the notion of people of different incomes living in the same area isn’t foreign to the city.

“New Orleans is already a mixed income city,” Morris said. “If you walk six blocks you can be in a totally different neighborhood, with the exceptions of the housing developments, which were islands of poverty.”

Morris, who oversees the Lafitte public housing project, says families in mixed-income communities benefit from the steady flow of money from homeowners and market rate tenants used to maintain the units, attentive management and better safety.

For residents in new housing developments, the experience can be mixed. Meghan Gallagher, a research assistant at the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C., says that although they enjoy new housing, many still face economic difficulties. Gallagher has studied the redevelopment of low-income communities in some of America’s major cities, focusing her recent work on the south side of Chicago, once notorious for crime and substandard living.

Although comparable to New Orleans in size, Chicago’s public housing remains for use by low-income families.

“Housing quality is a lot higher.” Gallagher said, referring to the projects after redevelopment. “There’s no chipped paint, rodents or other safety issues. I’ve had reports from residents saying it doesn’t feel like public housing as they knew it.”

But, she said, many residents still have trouble paying utilities and rent, because, like New Orleans, Chicago suffers from a lack of job opportunities.

“The level of employment and income has not changed since development,” she said. “So people have more responsibility, but no greater resources.”

It is partly for this reason that there is still strong opposition to redeveloped housing in New Orleans. Former residents feel as though they were left out of decisions and forced from their homes. Fees and deposits make affordability difficult and social advocates say demolition has effectively displaced many low-income residents.

Anita Sinha, senior attorney at the Advancement Project, a civil rights organization, represented many former residents of the Big Four who sued the city for wrongful eviction. She said the hurricane greatly affected working-class citizens because the majority of the homes damaged were in affordable housing areas like Central City and the Uptown area.

She added that she is troubled by the national sentiment to redevelop public housing, which she said patronizes people in affordable housing and has racial undertones.

“Some think if public housing families live next to a middle-income family, children will do homework better and they’ll have better job opportunities,” Sinha said.

The new housing uses the same model as a project built in 2004 that replaced the St. Thomas public housing project in the Garden District. The development served as a prototype for the Big Four changes.

Don Everard, director of Hope House, a neighborhood organization near River Garden, formerly the St. Thomas projects, said at least 300 St. Thomas families attempted to return to the new complex after the storm, but found themselves faced with a number of issues.

Some felt pressured because of stricter eviction regulations, or rules for guests.

“A lot of public housing residents have relatives who have had trouble with the law, and management put in rules about having guests who were ex-offenders,” Everard said. “If a person in the household gets in trouble, the whole family can be evicted.”

Everard said that low-income people are being exploited and that their welfare is not truly a concern of the city.

“They’re not valued,” he said. “They’re not valued by the housing authority, by HUD, or by the city in general. The thought is, ‘Whatever you get is good enough.’”

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Serenthia Joseph, 17, works on a headband that will be featured in a June 17 fashion show produced by the Fashion Institute of New Orleans. Joseph said she began to learn how to sew the day before. (Thaisi H. Da Silva/NYT Institute)

The whirring sounds of the sewing machines permeated the small room as students at the Fashion Institute of New Orleans prepared for their big day — the third annual fashion show in three weeks.

For 18-year-old Susan Henry, her interest in sewing began at age 9, when she started making clothes for her Barbies. She saved $200 to buy her first sewing machine at 13.

“I started sewing T-shirts that were too big,” said Henry, a recent graduate of John McDonogh Senior High School. “I would just start buying clothes that were too big, so I could just take them in.”

As she prepares for the fashion show at Generations Hall on June 17, she said she has grown.

“I’m not the best, but I learned how to use patterns. I can understand the basics,” she said.

The Fashion Institute of New Orleans, created in 2007, offers a rare opportunity for high school students in the Louisiana Recovery School District to get hands-on experience in the fashion and retail industry. Eighty students are currently enrolled in the free, yearlong program. The top 10 students in the Institute receive a trip to New York, where they participate in a mentor program with fashion industry professionals.

The Institute was created with a $200,000 grant that the Louisiana Retail Association initially gave to the District 2 Community Enhancement Corporation to start a customer service skills program. Blane Williams, director of the Institute, said that after Hurricane Katrina many businesses weren’t returning so the corporation decided to transfer the funds to start the Institute.

The students are chosen by their high school guidance counselors based on a number of factors, including grades and conduct, but the participants all have one thing in common — an interest in fashion.

Three days out of the month students participate in workshops, go on field trips, take sewing classes or complete projects that include skincare and make-up; fashion design and apparel construction; graphic design; photography; and modeling.

“We have so many different programs,” said Williams, whose love of fashion led to her job as director. “We had a shoe design workshop with a facilitator from Coach. The students were taught how to sketch shoes.”

Williams said many former students have gone on to the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York or the various Arts Institutes throughout the country. Some former students return for another year in the program.

“It’s a one-year program, but somehow students always find their way back,” she said.

Henry, a spunky second-year student at the Institute, has learned that hard work pays off. She will begin cosmetology school soon, with hopes of attending Dillard University.

“Most of the times I may sketch something and I have a good idea of exactly what I want it to look like,” she said. “But after I keep working on it, it ends up looking different and better than what I first sketched.”

Inspired by designers like Tina Knowles and trendsetters like Rihanna, she said,she created a long, body-hugging olive green dress with flowers attached that she recently wore to her senior prom. It’s her favorite creation.

In her two years in the program, Henry has not only developed her skills but also inspired other students like 18-year-old Brionne Brack.

“I see all the stuff she makes, and I would think she was amazing,” Brack said. “It looks like something you can buy at the store, but she just made it.”

A recent field trip to Louisiana State University’s Textile & Costume Museum piqued her interest in the renowned fashion designer Christian Dior, the subject of an exhibition there.

“I like the fact that he didn’t want to be a fashion designer at first,” Brack said. “He just saw somebody else doing it, and he thought he could do it too.”

A rising senior at John McDonogh High School, Brack said she hopes to return to the Institute next year and later attend college and major in fashion design.

“I just want to make clothes for other people,” she said.

The June 17 fashion show allows each student to showcase work completed through the year. The students will show several different combined collections, ranging from an ‘80s theme to Goth punk.

“The most memorable moments are the fashion shows,” Henry said. “That’s where you see everything that students have made, and mostly everyone comes back to be a part of the show.”

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The Theatres at Canal Place opened its doors for the first time Wednesday evening for the midnight premiere of the film “Sex and the City 2,” debuting an elegant space for people seeking dinner and a movie in one place.

The theater replaces the 21-year-old Canal Place Cinema, which for years had showed independent and foreign films, but closed Sept. 7. The new owner, George Soloman, oversaw a multimillion-dollar renovation, including a restaurant and seating area.

Now, the Theatres at Canal Place offers everything from a full-service bar, reserved theater seating and the Gusto Cafe, which serves Mediterranean-style dishes by well known chef Adolfo Garcia.

The five auditoriums have spacious aisles and high-backed, red leather seats with connecting swivel trays.

“Everything is digital,” said manager Brian Jones.

The Gusto Cafe and menu reinforces Solomon’s emphasis on modern comfort. Garcia said Soloman was smart enough to know he could not carry out his vision alone, so he hired the experienced chef.

Garcia, who also owns three restaurants in New Orleans — Spanish seafood restaurant RioMar, La Boca steakhouse and Mano, a traditional Italian restaurant — hired the wait staff and developed a full drinks and food menu.

That menu includes dishes likes hummus-and-tzatziki pairings, freshly prepared paninis with ciabatta bread, ham and mozzarella, as well as flatbread pizzas with artichokes and goat cheese.

“I love cooking. I love the restaurant business,” Garcia said.

Theater manager Brian Jones said the theater’s décor was inspired by 1930s-era Art Deco.

Ernesto Sigmon, who came to the theater Thursday, called it “sleek and sexy.”

“I feel like I’m in somebody’s house, someone who has a lot of money,” Sigmon said.

Sigmon and his companion, Lindsey Coat, had never visited the theater when it was still the Canal Place Cinema. They said The Theaters at Canal Place was a chic alternative to a traditional movie theater. Coat liked the spacious seating that allowed her to stretch her legs, given her tall stature.

Theatres at Canal Place is still undergoing small renovations, including the addition of a wall near the digital control room, said Ron Copeland, who is training the wait staff and bartenders.

This post was updated June 21.

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E. Aminata Brown, creator of BaBa Blankets, sits on bedding created by a collective that teaches underprivileged women in Ghana to sew. Brown sells the items in her New Orleans shop, Baba Blankets & Crafts. (Thaisi H. Da Silva/NYT Institute)

While working in Ghana in 1999, E. Aminata Brown came across a community of young girls working as load carriers, or “kaya yo.” These girls, most of them adolescents, had dropped out of school to earn money for their families. They worked from dawn to dusk — unloading trucks and carrying cargo for the shops in the local market, sometimes making less than $1 a day.

“I was really inspired by their determination, commitment to their own growth and what they were giving of themselves in order to move forward and I wanted to do something to support them,” said Brown, 38.

Brown asked them, if they could do one thing to change their lives what it would be. They all said they wanted to learn to sew.

In 2000, Brown created BaBa Blankets, named for an African term that means respect. The collective teaches Ghanian women from economically disadvantaged backgrounds how to sew. The women create bedding, dining accessories, clothes, bags and hats that are then sold in the U.S.

Brown suspended the business in 2003 to attend graduate school and relaunched BaBa Blankets in 2006. Initially, the products were sold only at special events and festivals, but after visiting New Orleans in 2007, Brown moved there and opened a store in the Garden District in 2008. The items are also sold on the BaBa Blankets website.

“It reminded me so much of Ghana. It’s a place where people are still at the center of life,” said Brown, a Detroit native. “I really yearned, after living in Ghana, to live in a place that felt very community-oriented. I felt more than anything else that New Orleans was a place that would immediately get and support BaBa Blankets. I just feel like I’m in the perfect place to incubate this enterprise.”

Today, six women work and live in the BaBa Blankets production studio in Ghana. Brown describes the effort as a social enterprise because it not only provides sustainable income for women in poor rural communities, but also allows them to learn the artistic and technical skills to become entrepreneurs. The women in the collective can make up to $400 a month, depending on how many products are sold, in a country where the poorest 20 percent earn the equivalent of $69 a year.

Handmade jewelry is sold in New Orleans shop, BaBa Blankets & Crafts. The store is owned by E. Aminata Brown, creator of collective that works with underprivileged women. (Thaisi H. Da Silva/NYT Institute)

“We’re really focusing on developing skills, entrepreneurial and technical skills that would enable women to support themselves and sustain themselves,” said Brown. “They’ve become the ones who are supporting their siblings and giving money to their parents to see them through their tough times.”

Brown said the jobs at BaBa Blankets have given the women in the collective a sense of pride.

“They are so proud of themselves,” she said. “The way that they carry themselves, the way that they present themselves to the world, there’s a real inner strength.”

Two years ago, Brown established the Stay-in-School Tuition Assistance (SISTA) program, in which a percent of profits from BaBa Blankets go to tuition for 25 girls in secondary school in Ghana. The goal, she said, is to prevent girls from dropping out of school to become load carriers, which she believes sets them on a road toward marginalization. Instead, she wants to provide them with education beyond middle school level.

“This is the level which girls are really becoming literate to a degree where they would be able to function in society,” said Brown. “Without graduating from high school, they really are not equipped to participate in mainstream society.”

Brown, who visits Ghana several times a year, said the effort can be a challenge at times, especially financially. She manages product design, production, marketing and distribution with two employees and a contractor who help with administrative work and public relations.

The economic downturn has also had an impact, but Brown, a former corporate consultant, says it’s worth it.

“It’s such a rich experience for me. It’s work that feeds my soul,” said Brown. “It’s not something that has made me a rich person by any stretch of the imagination. It’s a lot of work and it’s very challenging to hold together financially. But the wealth of it, the richness of it, is in a very different form and so that’s why I get up every day and do it.”

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Leah Chase has lived an extraordinary 87 years. Known to the world as the “Queen of Creole Cuisine” and to a generation of young African-American girls as the inspiration for Princess Tiana, in the Walt Disney animated film “The Princess and the Frog,” Chase prefers to be called “gran” or “mama” by her four children, 16 grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. Since 1946, Chase has also been the executive chef at the world renowned Dooky Chase’s Restaurant in the Treme neighborhood of New Orleans.

Fresh parsley is a main ingredient in many of Chase

Born to Creole parents in Madisonville, La., in 1923, Chase was destined to become a culinary legend. After moving to New Orleans to attend high school, she began working in the French Quarter, in upscale restaurants where African-Americans weren’t allowed to eat. Shortly after she married musician Edgar “Dooky” Chase II in 1945, his father died and the young couple inherited his parents’ small po’boy shop, Dooky Chase.

Chase wanted to bring the upscale elegance of the restaurants in the French Quarter to her new venture.

“I wanted my people to have an opulent dining experience,” Chase said. “We weren’t allowed to eat in grander restaurants during the 1940s and 1950s, so black folks didn’t know what to think when I brought out fine china and linen tablecloths. They told my mother-in-law I was gonna ruin her business!”

After 64 years at the helm, it’s evident that Chase was an innovator. She has won numerous awards for her culinary genius and dedication to the New Orleans community, including an Outstanding Woman Award from the National Council of Negro Women, honors from the NAACP and the Weiss Award from the National Conference of Christians and Jews.

Dooky Chase’s Restaurant was a staple in New Orleans as a meeting place during the 1960s for civil rights activists. “I remember one day Rosa Parks, Dorothy Height, Coretta Scott King and Betty Shabazz all came in for lunch. It’s common for the biggest people in the world to come through those doors.” President Barack Obama has eaten there several times, as have former presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

She is an avid art collector and uses the restaurant as a gallery for African-American artists. “One of my favorite artists is Elizabeth Catlett. We’re still good friends and I have a few of her pieces in the dining room,” she said.

Chase, whose husband stays out of the limelight, is also a resilient matriarch. When Hurricane Katrina left the restaurant with severe flood damage, she was forced to close. Determined to keep serving the New Orleans community, she persevered. With generous donations from companies such as Williams-Sonoma and Walt Disney, along with contributions from her loyal patrons, Dooky Chase’s Restaurant reopened in April 2007. Business has been steady, but the restaurant has limited lunch hours until a full professionally trained wait staff can be hired.

Chase still holds true to her late father’s teachings: Pray, work hard and do for others.

“I’ve been so blessed in my life that I must help others, it’s the right thing to do,” she said.

Chase doesn’t understand all the fuss about her or her life’s work.

“I just get up in the morning and do what I have to do. I just say my prayers and you work, you just do it,” she said, displaying the modest nature that is one of her many regal characteristics and makes her as attractive as her signature seafood gumbo and crawfish étouffée.

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When I approached the corner, there they were. To Be Continued, a New Orleans-based brass band, was practicing in front of a freshly painted mural on the side of a building at Canal and Bourbon Streets.

It was amazing to see young men dressed in street clothes making sounds that were so beautiful — their cheeks full of air and voices that rang louder than the bustling noise of busy streets. Taped to the wall behind the band was a newspaper clipping about the recent death of one of its original members.

To Be Continued was founded in 2003 as a way to make money, but the band members soon realized they could make an impact on the community. For Devin Vance, a trombonist for the band, the impact was personal.

“If this wouldn’t have happened for me, I don’t know where I would be, in jail, anything, but this took me away from that,” he said. “It opened doors, it lets me see the bigger picture, to see what the world is really about.”

But another member could not escape the violence. Brandon Franklin, 22, a saxophonist and original member of the band, had just died in a domestic dispute. The band had been performing various events in his honor, and also had the heartbreaking job of serving as pallbearers at his funeral.

“Brandon was a remarkable person,” said his mother, Lucky Franklin. “He was a remarkable child. We always thought he would be something big.”

Despite its loss, the band is determined to keep spirits high.

“It is a bad thing, but it’s kind of a good thing because now we got to keep his name living, by all means necessary,” Vance said. ”And that’s what we are gonna do.”

After the Mid-City Bayou Boogaloo, the players seemed optimistic about moving forward and learning from the past.

“To Be Continued means everything to me. It’s my life, this is what I do,” said Darron Downs, the band’s drummer. “This is how I survive, this is our business, our company, my family, my brothers.”

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