No pun intended! I have to apologize for not posting anything this past week, but my schedule was significantly more full than usual. I cut back my normal work week to 23 hours so that I could put in 27 volunteer hours building a house! (Hence the dust, both on my keyboard, and at the house!) It was part of a women-only project through Habitat for Humanity. Yep- you read right! All women. We were building a split-level, four-bedroom house for a sweet lady coincidentally named Hope. Hope is a single mom with five children, who not only works full-time, but is also going to school. With only two weeks construction time, Hope's house will be turned over to her this coming Saturday at a special dedication ceremony.For those of you who are not familiar with Habitat for Humanity, I encourage you to visit their website and take a look around. Just to give you a few basics, Habitat builds simple, decent houses entirely through volunteers and donations of money and materials. Those houses are then sold to selected families at no profit and financed with affordable loans. The new homeowners must have a down payment, make monthly mortgage payments, and invents hundreds of hours of labor (sweat equity) into their own Habitat house, as well as the houses of others. Their monthly mortgage payments are in turn used to build more Habitat houses.
Now, back to the all-women part! Many Habitat chapters feature Women Build projects each year. My local chapter has done one Women Build house each year for the past ten years. Did I wear red nail polish like the picture above? Nope, but I did have my acrylic nails! (And broke one, by the way! Darn hammer!) Throughout the four days I worked, some of the tasks I helped with included: setting roof trusses, attaching roof sheathing, installing and caulking windows, installing roof vents, insulating, and hanging sheet rock. Yes, I was sore each night, and it was a lot of hard work. But working along side Hope, seeing her older kids help out, and seeing her younger children and her mother visit the house... It was all well worth it, knowing that I was giving back to my community and helping a family that would not otherwise have the opportunity to own their own home.
Though this was my first year working on the Women Build house, I actually got started with Habitat last summer, when my company sponsored two teams of volunteers (one day for each team) in honor of their 30th anniversary. Here's a picture that the local newspaper took of me, and printed in the paper:
If you have any interest in Habitat for Humanity, please visit their website and contact your local chapter. They are always looking for volunteers. No construction experience necessary! Anyone else have any favorite non-profit organizations that they volunteer with?
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