This is the “crunch” quarter for this affiliate. Each week one or more groups of new volunteers (many college students) will arrive for an action packed 5 days of construction. The affiliate anticipates that over 25 houses will be completed by early April. That’s 25 families moving into safe, simple homes from FEMA trailers, over-crowed relatives homes, or sub-standard apartments!
Our work with Habitat here varies day to day. Most mornings, Dave, Terry and Sue head for a construction site. In the week that we have been here, they have worked on three different houses.
Today the 3 returned to the house they worked on last Wednesday. They were amazed to find that since then:
- the siding was done
- mechanicals completed
- drywall was up, walls painted – both inside and out
- the roof was shingled
- and by this Saturday, the interior trim will also be complete
Whew! It’s a fast construction schedule – in part due to the amount of volunteers and staff that are assigned to a house each day. The down side is that there can be times when the work stalls due to so many volunteers.
In addition, Dave and Terry are putting their IT skills to work to do a complete assessment of the affiliate’s computing needs. The staff is thrilled to have such highly skilled geeks to advise them!
Susi has been given 3 projects to work on at the office. Wendy, the Executive Director, is interested in having the Habitat affiliate take a leading role in “building green” and developing sustainable construction practices. “Since we have to rebuild 91% of this city – why not build it green?” Wendy stated. She asked me to put together a “Building Affordable Houses Green” workshop to be held in April. I’ve been chatting with various national presenters and hoping to get everything in place (including finding other volunteers to run it) before I leave.
My second project is to research and promote the development of a ReStore at this affiliate. ReStores not only help a community recycle construction materials – they can be a significant funding source for Habitat affiliates. Since I started the one at the Columbus Habitat affiliate 14 years ago, this is more in my range of expertise!
My 3rd project will be interviewing the homeowners prior to the beginning of their house construction. I’ll interview the families, write a story, take pictures and upload the photos, the story and video on the Habitat for Humanity Bay-Waveland website: https://www.habitatbaywaveland.org/ I’m very excited to learn more about video and pod-casting!
Take a look at some of Dave’s construction pictures…
