On Saturday, I spent the day volunteering at Rainier Vista in the Rainier Valley on a Habitat for Humanity job site. Sellen brought 32 people together from both office & field locations to contribute a full day of work. As you can see from the first photo, we have special shirts made and the crew was roaring to go at 8:30 am.
The whole day was great (but exhausting!), but the highlight for me was getting to know the home owners. For those less familiar with Habitat for Humanity - it's not a charity organization. They provide affordable homes for families that qualify and the homeowners purchase the homes at affordable prices with 0-interest loans that Habitat provides. The money that they pay on their mortgages goes back into Habitat's system to purchase land and build more homes. In addition to qualifying and paying mortgage, the home owners are also required to put-in 500 hours of "sweat equity" on their homes. That means that on top of their 40-hour per week jobs, they also have to work on building their homes on weekends and evenings. Talk about a major commitment. We worked with Ben, Asha, and Sherry on Saturday.
Our project was ambitious, but given that we had a crew of skilled carpenters with us, we really wanted to provide a special service to Habitat. So, we committed to forming the footings for a 4plex and then pouring and finishing the concrete - all in one day. This normally takes Habitat 2 - 3 weeks to complete when they use unskilled volunteers. Needless to say, they were SO happy to have us do this work. My job was to back fill dirt around the base of the forms so that concrete would not seep out of the sides. It was backbreaking work, but very important to the project's success, so I felt important!
The highlight for me was at the end of the day after the concrete was poured – the home owners Asha and Sherry, whose homes we had just formed & poured the footings, for took sticks and wrote their names and the date in the concrete and then posed for pictures. They’ve been waiting over 2 years for these homes and it was a really rewarding experience to see the joy in their eyes as the reality of a new home for their families started to take shape.
Here are a few photos from our day:
The group of volunteers, Habitat for Humanity staff, and one of our homeowners, Sherry.
The whole day was great (but exhausting!), but the highlight for me was getting to know the home owners. For those less familiar with Habitat for Humanity - it's not a charity organization. They provide affordable homes for families that qualify and the homeowners purchase the homes at affordable prices with 0-interest loans that Habitat provides. The money that they pay on their mortgages goes back into Habitat's system to purchase land and build more homes. In addition to qualifying and paying mortgage, the home owners are also required to put-in 500 hours of "sweat equity" on their homes. That means that on top of their 40-hour per week jobs, they also have to work on building their homes on weekends and evenings. Talk about a major commitment. We worked with Ben, Asha, and Sherry on Saturday.
Our project was ambitious, but given that we had a crew of skilled carpenters with us, we really wanted to provide a special service to Habitat. So, we committed to forming the footings for a 4plex and then pouring and finishing the concrete - all in one day. This normally takes Habitat 2 - 3 weeks to complete when they use unskilled volunteers. Needless to say, they were SO happy to have us do this work. My job was to back fill dirt around the base of the forms so that concrete would not seep out of the sides. It was backbreaking work, but very important to the project's success, so I felt important!
The highlight for me was at the end of the day after the concrete was poured – the home owners Asha and Sherry, whose homes we had just formed & poured the footings, for took sticks and wrote their names and the date in the concrete and then posed for pictures. They’ve been waiting over 2 years for these homes and it was a really rewarding experience to see the joy in their eyes as the reality of a new home for their families started to take shape.
Here are a few photos from our day:
The group of volunteers, Habitat for Humanity staff, and one of our homeowners, Sherry.
The site before we started working...
Just getting started...
The form work is almost done!
Sherry pouring concrete for her new home.
The finished product - pretty impressive for one day's work!
