Case Study: Relief workers displace students in Houma

Emergency response workers cleaning up the gulf oil spill continue to fill hotels in Houma, La., but in mid-June, when more than 3,000 students were scheduled to arrive for the annual Steubenville on the Bayou conference, Conference Coordinator Sally Dubroc and Angela Morehead, meeting and event sales with the Houma Area CVB, had to work together to find beds for everyone.

What: Steubenville on the Bayou, an annual youth conference that started in Steubenville, Ohio, in 1975, has been held in the Diocese of Houma-Thibodaux for the past four years.

When: June 18-20, 2010

Where: Houma-Terrebonne Civic Center in Houma, La.

Attendees: More than 3,200 attendees

Challenge: Emergency response workers filled hotels beginning in early May due to the gulf oil spill, forcing the hotels to cancel upcoming reservations. With more than 3,000 students arriving in less than a month and a half, Dubroc and Morehead had to find alternative housing in Houma, as well as surrounding parishes.

Solution: Nicholls State University provided more than 600 beds, and hotels as far as 55 miles away were used. “I went through the entire parish and scraped up everything I could,” says Morehead. “I went to other parishes — St. Mary Parish helped, but they had emergency workers too. It took a lot of teamwork, but no one canceled. We didn’t have one person cancel.”

Advice: “If I had to sum it up in one word it would be perseverance,” Dubroc says. “You have to push through. The main thing is, you have to trust God No. 1 and yourself as a meeting planner — that you can handle what comes your way.”

Look for Dubroc’s Inspiration story about her experience planning this meeting and others like it in the August issue of Rejuvenate.