Every day, Rob Brown remembers the dead bodies left behind by Hurricane Katrina.

The houses splattered with red paint and a body-count number are still fresh in the no-preference Lyman Briggs sophomore's mind.

"Every single house has spray paint on the front of the house, usually a red circle with an 'X,'" Brown said. "And then the number on the bottom is how many bodies were found inside."

Brown returned to Michigan in June with about 45 MSU students and faculty members who participated in the MSU New Orleans Summer Project. The project sent volunteers to New Orleans to assist young students affected by Hurricane Katrina.

The volunteers split up into four groups and spent four weeks in Louisiana, tutoring fourth- and eighth-grade students who hadn't passed the Louisiana Educational Assessment Program, said MSU volunteer Marcy Wood.

"We only taught them for about three weeks, so the impact in the classroom was very little," said social relations senior Jimmy Schneidewind. "The kids really needed someone to talk to, someone to care about them, someone to listen."

And their lives have changed more than most can understand without seeing the destruction firsthand, Brown said.

"On the second day of class, a kid grabbed me by the hand and out of nowhere said, 'Katrina took my mom.' Then he smiled and said, 'Just kidding,' and ran away," Brown said. "I still to this day don't know whether that is true or not."

When Brown left New Orleans, it didn't seem like any businesses would be open soon, he said. He saw a Rite Aid pharmacy operating out of a trailer, and there were still waterlines on all of the houses and buildings.

Schneidewind said sending money or materials isn't the best way to help children devastated by the storm.

"They have an avalanche of school supplies from all over the country down there," he said. "They really need a friend. They really need someone to talk to."