Nadine Bean Is in “O” Magazine

“I thought it was a real long shot,” says Nadine Bean, recalling how she felt while completing the grueling application for the “Women Rule!” competition she found in Oprah Winfrey’s O Magazine. So she was surprised and elated to be named one of only 80 – out of 3,200 applicants – exceptional women with leadership potential who have a vision for their entrepreneurial projects in politics or government, business or nonprofit leadership. The winners are profiled in the November issue of O.

As a social work professional, Bean has been to New Orleans eight times since Katrina, sometimes with West Chester MSW students, to help rebuild homes and to provide the disaster mental health services the survivors desperately need. She concentrates on the decimated Lower Ninth Ward. Bean’s leadership in establishing initiatives that deliver those services is what caught the attention of the editors at O and the White House Project, a national nonprofit group dedicated to getting women into positions of power.

The 80 women who were selected took part in the first-ever three-day leadership course created by the White House Project. Held in New York City in June, the course included coaching from nationally renowned women in the business, political and non-profit sectors. Each winner left the weekend with a plan for her original idea in hand.

Bean found many aspects of the training valuable, including the concept of a 30-second “elevator speech,” a pitch she could make in the time it would take to ride a hypothetical elevator with a potential investor.

“They videotaped everyone, had us work up to a three-minute speech, then longer, so we could ask for funding,” Bean explains. “It’s uncomfortable asking for money, but I’m getting better. ”We need human resources to rebuild the community’s spirit,” she continues. "I am continually inspired by the these residents’ resilience and that keeps me going.”

And it seems as if Bean never stops. She has developed a network of mental health clinics and professionals within a short bus ride of the Lower Ninth to which she can refer residents. She produced the multimedia presentation “Women of NOLA: Voices of Resilience Before, During and After Katrina,” the stories of six local women and their families told through video, music and live performance. She’s a cofounder and board member of lowernine.org, a non-profit that has bought a house in the ward to use as an office and where long-term volunteers can sleep. She hopes to make a separate space within those walls so survivors can feel comfortable discussing their concerns in private.

“Maybe 10 percent of residents are back in their homes,” she notes. “There’s no funding for emotional and social support services. Yet these people need, at the very least, psychological first aid. We have to triage their mental health needs and then try to find services they can access. The problem is that so many mental health professionals have left New Orleans since Katrina hit.”

During this Labor Day Weekend’s Hurricane Gustav, she says, children especially were traumatized when mandatory evacuations were enacted. Revisiting the same conditions as Katrina caused can bring out behavioral and emotional problems in school.

Bean’s plan is to bring in social work students to integrate emotional and social support services into the physical and emotional/spiritual rebuilding of the Lower Ninth Ward. She plans to open a one-day-a-week drop-in clinic for residents to discuss how they’re doing since Katrina. She’ll offer psycho educational groups to parents and seniors.

“People donate to the rebuilding process because housing is tangible, but emotional and social support services are every bit as vital to rebuilding the community.”

Nadine Bean is immediate past president of the National Association of Social Workers, PA Chapter (2005-2007). She teaches students in the MSW program at West Chester and is a Red Cross-certified disaster mental health services volunteer. During the spring 2009 semester, Bean will take sabbatical to devote herself full time to the emotional/spiritual rebuilding services in the Lower Ninth Ward and other areas of New Orleans and to teach a course on social work for disasters at Tulane School of Social Work.