Habitat for Humanity
- About Habitat for Humanity
- Saturday, October 21, 2001 - Lawrence, MA
- Old Habitat for Humanity Events
Habitat for Humanity (HFH) is an organization dedicated to building houses for low-income, and in many cases formerly-homeless families. In and around many American cities, the shortage of affordable housing is a serious problem, and clearly contributes to the U.S. homeless problem; it is hard to get a decent job without a permanent residence, and even harder to get stable housing without a decent job, hence a vicious cycle. Former president Jimmy Carter has been a strong supporter of HFH from the get-go, while more recently, even Oprah Winfrey has helped raise money for new housing sites (for example Spohr's Corps at Ashdown has worked on "Oprah House" in Providence, RI).
Habitat screens applicants for its housing sites based upon income range. Essentially, the finished house becomes the property of the fortunate family, with HFH in most cases providing an interest-free loan. In addition, house recipients have a "human" investment in the house, since they must contribute at least 500 hours of work to their own and other site projects. This may, in our belief, be key to building local communities: HFH families may take greater pride in their own property and in the neighborhood, because Habitat doesn't merely provide a hand-out.
For supplies and workers, HFH depends heavily on donations and volunteer involvement. NO EXPERIENCE IS NECESSARY, and it's often a lot more fun when you're just learning a skill for the 1st time. At the end of a day of hard work, it's easy to see that you're making a difference: getting one's hands away from the test tubes or keyboards and getting dirty now and then also has psychological benefits!
Saturday, October 20, 2001 - Lawrence, MA
We traveled to Lawrence, MA to work on the MIT Habitat House. The exterior of the house is almost complete, and we put on siding and finished up some aspects of the roof. We also took down the scaffolding on the back of the house (which had been put up by some members of our group during Graduate Student Volunteer Day). Our team of hard workers was appreciated and directed by the site supervisor Mike deBerg. Several of our group also went over to a different Habitat house in Tenney, where help was needed putting up a fence. We had 18 members join us for the day:
Serena Silver, Adam Brown, Alex Ensminger, Chris Beauchamp, Jeff Abes, Soojn Kwon, Mike Cluff, Elke Lynn Hodson, Shannon Flaugh, Roland Sargeant, Jeff Miller, Ishara Mills, David Doroquez, Jonna Peat, Christopher Guerra, Meredith Gerber, Ming, and Eric. Thanks to all who participated!
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MIT Graduate Student Volunteer Corps
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