Announcing the St. Bernard Co-Creator Team

WLI is excited to be hosting a St. Bernard Parish cohort of Water Leaders this summer, with the generous support of the Meraux Foundation. Co-creating the curriculum with the WLI team are Monique Verdin, Maryam Henderson-Uloho, and Nancy Burtchaell. Many thanks to Greta Gladney for introducing us to Mural as a tool for co-creation. 

Monique Verdin (@moniqueverdin) is an interdisciplinary storyteller who has intimately documented the complex interconnectedness of environment, culture, climate and change in southeast Louisiana. Monique is director of the Land Memory Bank & Seed Exchange, a former member of the United Houma Nation Tribal Council and is part of the Another Gulf Is Possible (@anothergulf.ispossible) Collaborative core leadership circle of brown (indigenous, latinx and desi) women, from Texas to Florida, working to envision just economies, vibrant communities and sustainable ecologies. Learn more about Monique and her work here.

Maryam Henderson-Uloho is the founder and owner of Sister Hearts (@sisterhearts_thriftstore). Sister Hearts is a 17,000 square foot thrift store located at 7519 W Judge Perez Dr. in Arabi, Louisiana. The thrift store provides work, shelter and a fresh future for formerly incarcerated men and women. The Sister Hearts community builds workplace competence and economic independence in a nurturing environment. Learn more about Maryam and her journey from incarceration to Sister Hearts here. 

Nancy Burtchaell, originally from Minnesota, moved to Louisiana as a young adult, married and raised two sons in St. Bernard Parish. She has a BA in Music Education and a MM in Music Performance, performing as a harpist and instrumentalist in the New Orleans area. Her other passion is the outdoors and she has taken dozens of nature courses and teacher trainings over the years while creating and coordinating a youth outdoors program for years as a nontraditional teacher. This program, called Teen Outdoor Education and Stewardship/TOES, was dedicated to outdoor education, coastal restoration, conservation, outdoor exercise, fun, stewardship and connections between art and ecology. These two passions resulted in her "Instruments Inspired by Nature" exhibit, which uses found materials to create instruments to teach elements of music and to tell stories about our coast. The pandemic mandate has her busy cooking, studying Spanish and gardening, tending to a growing collection of LA natives and other plants grown from seed. View one her instruments here.