Report: Volunteer Services in New Orleans Worth Millions

More than a million people have volunteered to help in the post-Katrina recovery efforts, providing services worth more than $260-million to the region, a new government report has found, The Times-Picayune, in New Orleans, reports.

The Corporation for National and Community Service’s research found that the number of volunteers in the region rose 9 percent last year over the first year after Hurricane Katrina, the paper reports. The local executive director of Habitat for Humanity tells the paper he estimates that such levels of volunteer activity need to continue for at least eight more years.

To date, the 1.1 million volunteers in the area have clocked approximately 14 million hours of work, the study found.