For Gloria Mouton, rebuilding her home has meant that her grandchildren will be able to have a backyard to play in again.

“After the hurricane we stayed in hotels in Houston and Atlanta,” said Mouton, who still lives in Atlanta. “It’s taken a toll on my family. We have lost so much – not just the physical things, but our memories.”

Mouton, like so many New Orleans residents displaced after Hurricane Katrina, has not been able to return home because of financial setbacks. Most of her recovery funds were stolen by a contractor, she said.

“I shed tears for a long time,” Mouton said. “By the grace of God, I’m getting back to where I need to be because of the dedication and effort of the volunteers.”

Mouton is one of a dozen families who will be returning to the Little Woods community in New Orleans East because of “Neighborhood: New Orleans,” the first national ecumenical volunteer effort in New Orleans. The effort was organized by the New York-based humanitarian agency Church World Service.

National Voluntary Agencies Active in Disaster, a coalition of nonprofit organizations that collaborates to respond to disasters, honored Church World Service earlier this week with its 2009 Innovative Program of the Year Award for the New Orleans project.

The project gathered 500 volunteers from 27 states and Canada to rebuild homes in one neighborhood. After four weeks of construction, the homes are now almost finished and are awaiting inspection.

Church World Service is a social justice and disaster relief organization of 35 Christian churches. The organization assists in long-term recovery to help the most vulnerable survivors by providing emergency aid in the form of hygiene kits, blankets and equipment for schools.

Church World Service partnered with 10 other Christian humanitarian agencies from around the country to rehabilitate 12 homes in Little Woods.

“Never before have all 10 faith-based agencies worked together on one project,” said Matt Hackworth, a spokesman for Church World Service. “It was important that all these denominations worked as one to contribute to the long-term recovery in New Orleans.”

The New Orleans-based Crescent Alliance Recovery Effort worked with the national agencies to identify the homeowners and a neighborhood where there was a great need for help.

“We wanted to find an area that has been affected but neglected,” Ellenor Simmons of CARE said. “We went to the places where the cameras haven’t been.”

Little Woods is a working class neighborhood near Lake Pontchartrain that sustained catastrophic flooding when Hurricane Katrina hit, Hackworth said.

The streets in Little Woods are an example of the common post-Katrina condition of many neighborhoods, with repaired homes located next to vacant or unrepaired houses.

“The area created the jack-o-lantern effect,” said Hackworth. “Walking along the streets at night, a few houses are lit up in the midst of deserted homes that need to be torn down. It’s a neighborhood that was greatly affected and it’s clearly visible.”

The goal in bringing together several organizations was to accelerate one area’s recovery.

“Our philosophy is that rebuilding a dozen homes will be the catalyst that neighborhood needs to attract more families to move back and rebuild the community,” Hackworth said.