They were strangers here a few days ago, volunteering to knock on doors for a community-organizing group. Now Liz Henderson and Kristen Kuriga are greeted as friends. Mary Solomon, a lifelong New Orleanian, welcomes them into her cheerful white house - an anchor in a neighborhood where the decay started long before the storm.

They are here to listen to her story. To record it. To connect. To help. To learn.

***

The service trip in early January was only eight days long, but for Ms. Henderson, a junior at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, N.Y., it wasn't too brief to be "completely life-altering." Her experiences - ranging from gutting flooded houses to picketing a hotel trying to evict Katrina evacuees - put her on an emotional rollercoaster. But in the end, it confirmed her career aspirations: "Going door-to-door really showed me ... I'd like to do [a certain] kind of journalism - talking to people who normally don't have their stories told," she says.

Thousands of college students from across America have not only been moved by the magnitude of the Gulf Coast disaster - they've also been mobilized. Break Away, a group that coordinates alternative vacation trips, reports at least half of its 80 chapter schools are organizing hurricane-relief trips. More than 200 collegians have already traveled to the region for Break Away winter trips.

With guidance from nonprofit groups and professors devoted to the idea of service learning, young people are putting their talents to use in courtrooms and health clinics, at construction sites and elementary schools. As New Orleans and other Gulf coast towns reinvent themselves, many find it an irresistible living laboratory in which to hone their skills.

***

In a quiet voice, Ms. Solomon unfurls her story: her evacuation by helicopter after nearly a week refusing to leave; her first plane ride; her decision to return after friends saw her house on TV and said it was fine.

When the conversation shifts to the future, Ms. Kuriga, a trip leader and recent graduate of Sarah Lawrence, asks, "What do you want New Orleans to look like?"

"It should be better than it was, but I know it's going to take a couple of years." Solomon pauses, and lets out a long sigh. "I'm praying for that day, and for my children to come home." Her five children and their families are scattered across three states. She bows her head and brings her fingers to the bridge of her nose as if to hold back tears. Henderson reaches out to touch her arm. "I'm OK," Solomon says. "I do this every day."

***

A group that formed spontaneously at Sarah Lawrence decided right away that their response to the hurricane should extend beyond fundraising. Eventually they connected with the New Orleans office of the national group ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), which would host them on a service-learning trip. To prepare, they met with professors with expertise on urban development, race, mental health, and oral histories. They also started listening to the concerns of evacuees in their own backyard in New York.

"My main impression was complete shock and outrage," says Sarah Lawrence pupil Sarah Ihmoud of her November scouting trip to New Orleans. "It was almost as if a red tape had been put around entire communities and the federal government hadn't been doing anything. It made us feel very emotionally connected right away."

Nine students committed to the January trip, paid for by a combination of grants. "They aren't receiving credit, although it may end up being one of the most valuable learning experiences they have at college," says Dean Hubbard, a trip adviser who teaches community-organizing classes. The students hope to write up the oral histories and perhaps use them to raise more relief funds.

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