Every year, during the holiday season, The Motley Fool holds a charity drive called Foolanthropy. Last year, we raised more than $289,000 for five charities that we and our members felt most deserved our support.

One of those charities, the Humane Society of Louisiana, invited me down to New Orleans to attend a very special memorial service for the untold thousands of animals killed in Hurricane Katrina. I was extremely honored to receive the invitation, and I was also curious to see how the Society and the city were progressing seven months after the storm. (Look for an update on how all five charities have put your donations to use in an upcoming Foolanthropy article.)

Since I last visited Camp Katrina in December to lend a hand with displaced cats, dogs, rabbits, and gerbils, most of the city of New Orleans has come a long way toward recovery. There are no longer immense heaps of trash or the gutted insides of homes choking the streets, and the population, although much smaller, is slowly trickling back in.

But in the Ninth Ward, in Lakeview, and in the parishes outside the city, it still looks like a nuclear bomb went off. There's so much left to be done, it's impossible to convey the magnitude of damage unless you see for yourself how street after street after street lies in twisted, splintered, mold-covered ruin.

One thing I did notice, though: In all the miles of wasteland I saw, I didn't see a single stray dog or cat wandering around hungry or homeless. The Humane Society and other animal rescue organizations have done a very thorough job of getting animals off the street.

But that doesn't mean all is well for the animals of the hurricane-ravaged areas. Animal shelters in the region are so overcrowded, and resources still so depleted, that the future for many of these animals remains uncertain.

At the memorial service and luncheon I attended, I got to meet people from around the country who helped in the rescue effort or raised money for the organizations working with the animals in the region. I met people from Petco (NASDAQ:PETC) and PetSmart (NASDAQ:PETM), which gave its largest gift ever to an animal welfare agency -- a $1.3 million grant to the ASPCA -- to fund a large-scale spay/neuter program in greater New Orleans and south Mississippi. I also learned that PetSmart is establishing an emergency tractor-trailer rig supply system to prevent a future catastrophic shortage of supplies on the ground, as experienced during Katrina. And I met people from SpayMart, a non-profit that had spent the past eight years trying to establish a no-kill, large-volume, low-cost spay/neuter facility in Louisiana, only to have all their efforts wiped out in a single day. Now that so many more animals are homeless, they're even more determined to get the shelter up and running.

The memorial ceremony was an opportunity for the attendees -- many of whom are active in the effort to rebuild the Louisiana animal shelter network -- to exchange ideas, but it was also a chance for people to say a last public goodbye to the pets they lost. The stories of people separated from their pets on rooftops were heartbreaking. In particular, I remember the story of a rottweiler named My Boy. My Boy helped a college student living in the Ninth Ward climb onto her rooftop when she woke to find her apartment filling with water when the Industrial Canal levee broke. After he swam under the rushing floodwaters to boost the student onto the roof, he couldn't get himself onto the roof, so he swam to the roof next door. The girl and her dog waited on these neighboring rooftops without food or water for three days. When the rescue helicopter finally came, My Boy wasn't welcome aboard. The student hasn't seen her dog since, but she hopes one of the animal rescue organizations working in the area saved him and that he's been adopted into a loving home.

Despite the anger and sadness the stories evoked, I left with the knowledge that an extremely dedicated group of individuals and organizations is working to care for the animals who made it out alive, to reunite them with owners if possible, and to make sure we're better prepared for future catastrophic events. Animal activists are working with federal and state legislators to rewrite disaster-response plans to include animal evacuation. They want to ensure that people are never again faced with the decision to either abandon their pets and get themselves to safety, or try to weather the storm with their beloved companions.

That's the news from New Orleans -- some of it mournful, some of it hopeful. I'd like to say a very big "thank you" to the Humane Society of Louisiana for their tireless efforts, for organizing such a unique and inspiring gathering of people, and for offering some sense of closure in this dark chapter of New Orleans and American history.

And now for a wedding...
We are thrilled to announce that the Foolanthropy 2006 campaign will be sponsored by Hilton Family Hotels (NYSE:HLT). OK, so it's not really a wedding, but it is a very special partnership that's sure to benefit both parties. This is the first time in Foolanthropy's nine-year history that we will be working with a sponsor, and we are delighted that Foolanthropy's mission to support sustainable charities nominated by our readers will be linked with Hilton's "Be Hospitable" campaign.

We're all very excited to launch the 2006 campaign in the fall. Until then, keep an eye out for other articles in our new Foolanthropic series.

Fool on, and be hospitable!

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Fool editor Carrie Crockett was co-chair of the Foolanthropy 2005 campaign, along with David Gardner. She owns shares of none of the companies mentioned in this article. The Fool has an ironclad disclosure policy.