In the post-Katrina ruins of Louisiana’s St. Bernard Parish, the employees of Rain CII, a Gulf Coast industrial-carbon company, were facing a monumental recovery alongside their many neighbors and partners in the area. The storm had shut down operations at the Chalmette plant, and its offices — along with much of the New Orleans area — were uninhabitable.
St. Bernard Parish was among the regions hardest hit by the 2005 hurricane. When a 25-foot storm surge overflowed the Mississippi River from the south and Lake Pontchartrain rushed over the city from the north, waters as high as 15 feet flooded the area. Along with many displaced New Orleans residents, the corporate office (and 32 of its 35 employees) relocated to the Houston area. Rain CII re-established itself in Kingwood, Texas. Despite the physical relocation, the company’s management and employees remained committed volunteers in Chalmette’s recovery effort.
Redefining Community Outreach
As Rain CII Communications Manager Peter Wagner explains, the devastation wrought by Katrina impacted the corporation at every level. A small, 275-employee powerhouse of a manufacturer, Rain CII had long prided itself on strong ties to the communities where its seven plants turn out calcined petroleum coke needed for aluminum production.
“Rain CII has always been very conscious of the importance of community outreach,” Wagner says. “But certainly our corporate experience has been informed and shaped by the storm.” In the years following Katrina and subsequent major hurricanes, the organization’s leadership applied that hard-earned experience to the search for new approaches to helping the localities where it operates.
The search for improved ways of identifying and meeting local needs led Rain CII to query its employees on their ideas for contributing to their local communities. “Many of them,” Wagner says, “came up with park and rec-related ideas.”
In 2012, the company entered into a partnership with NRPA that resulted in the establishment of a $100,000 grant program to local parks. The funds were distributed in varying amounts to nine communities close to Rain CII’s plants and corporate offices. And in each case, the grant targeted specific needs identified by local parks and recreation agencies.
“Resourceful Giving” in Partnership with Parks
“This partnership with the NRPA marks an important step at Rain CII in our Resourceful Giving program,” Gerry Sweeney, president and CEO of Rain CII, comments. “It supports our Building Blocks for Success in giving back to communities in which we live and work, and promoting employee health and well-being, which we believe are basic tenets of any successful company. We have chosen NRPA because of their commitment to parks, communities and the environment at large across our country.”
The uniqueness of this grant program, NRPA Vice President of Development Rebecca Wickline observes, lies in both its flexibility and its regard for existing projects and facilities — allowing local park and recreation agencies “to complete projects that enrich the quality of life, local economies and even tourism in their communities.” The intent, she says, is to provide benefits that fit the unique character of each region.
As a result, grant projects run the gamut from smarter signage to more family-friendly fishing holes. In St. Charles Parish, Louisiana, for example, kiosks now offer visitor information, event guides and lessons in local history. And at a nearby levee area, crabbers, picnickers and campers can enjoy improved facilities. In Hattiesburg, Mississippi, home to a 350-acre sports complex that plays host to numerous regional tournaments, a wayfinding system now guides visitors efficiently to the correct field. And in Kingwood, Texas, Rain CII employees turned out to plant dozens of new trees to line the drive through a 63-acre community park.
Lifting Up a Levee
St. Charles Parish, Louisiana
Park directors praise the grant program for its responsiveness to community needs, needs that are sometimes unconventional. In the case of St. Charles Parish, a flood control structure the park department leases from the Army Corps of Engineers has long served as a popular family fishing and camping destination. The Bonnet Carré Spillway, which diverts water from the Mississippi River into Lake Pontchartrain, offers area residents a getaway where they can fish, crab, picnic and pitch tents.
And, St. Charles Parish Park Director Duane Foret is quick to add, the spillway recreation area is continually voted among the best crabbing spots in the country. The $8,000 grant provided the crabbers, canoers and kayakers with a new boat launch — and campers with signage throughout the 28-acre primitive campground.
“It has been a relationship-building experience,” Foret says of the funding project. “I know I could go to [Rain CII management] eventually and say, ‘You know what, guys? The 15–20 spaces in the boat launch aren’t enough to meet the demand. We’re going to need 40.’ I feel fortunate to have that kind of relationship.”
Pointing the Way
Hattiesburg, Mississippi
Ann Jones of the Hattiesburg, Mississippi, parks department also praises the program for forging stronger ties between Rain CII and the local community. As in St. Charles Parish, Hattiesburg’s grant addressed needs at a recreational hot spot. At Tatum Park, where regional sports tournaments deliver a multimillion-dollar impact each year to the local economy, visitors kept getting lost in the maze of ball fields.
“Wayfinding was a huge challenge to everyone who came in,” Jones explains. “And park employees were constantly being asked, ‘Where’s Field 7? Where’s the best place to park?’”
Now that Phase One of the $10,000 grant project is complete, color-coded banners mark fields while kiosks and signs point players and their families to the right soccer field. Phase Two will expand the wayfinding to the other sports hosted in the complex.
Employees from the nearby Rain CII Purvis, Mississippi, plant turned out at the completion of Phase One to try out the new system. “One of the young men who came out had never been to the park,” Jones says with a chuckle. “He was our guinea pig for finding his way around. And he did just fine.”
Laying a Foundation for Ongoing Partnership
Features like signage, picnic pavilions, tree plantings, boat launches and visitor kiosks are often the first to get cut from stretched local budgets. But, as Jones and Foret point out, they make the difference between an enjoyable recreational experience and a frustrating one.
Wagner says the company plans to continue the grant partnership and cites a list of future plans that include planting and trail projects along with continued dialogues with existing grant recipients.
“We’ve been part of the industrial landscape in these communities for a very long time,” Wagner summarizes, “Our goal with these grants is to be partners and good corporate citizens.”
And, according to Jones, programs like Rain CII’s partnership with NRPA accomplish that goal and much more. The collaborative, locally based design of this kind of grant program, she states, “sets the bar higher for other businesses and industries.”
Maureen Hannan is a Virginia-based writer and former senior editor of Parks & Recreation.