Over Spring Break, 12 students from Hopkins went to Jacksonville, Fla. to participate in Habitat for Humanity's Collegiate Challenge. We spent a week working with Habijax volunteers, staff and homeowners building a house at 1006 Tyler St. Most of us, myself included, had never participated in Habitat before and we didn't really know anything about the program, so we were not sure what to expect.
Habitat's goal is simple: to bring families and communities in need together with the volunteers and resources necessary to build decent, affordable housing. Habitat houses are purchased by approved homeowners chosen according to their need for housing, ability to pay for the house and willingness to work (homeowners must put in 300 hours of "sweat equity" by working on site before they may move in.) Approved homeowners tend to be living in substandard housing but are able to pay the low, interest-free 20 year mortgage that Habitat designed.
The first night in town our construction manager, Doug Ridgway, had us all over to his home for dinner, where he gave us each a framing hammer with our name engraved in it. Even though most of us had no clue what we were doing, our fancy hammers impressed everyone on site. The next morning at the site we met Winnie, the homeowner who would be moving into the house. We worked side by side with Winnie, who barely even paused for lunch. She was at the site early every morning, always excited to get to work building her home and she didn't stop smiling all week. It was great to get to know the woman we were working to help; it gave a human touch to the entire experience.
Unlike the other student groups who came for the Collegiate Challenge who switched work sites daily, we had our own house. The first day we started our house from scratch. Doug gave us a briefing on safety and our assignments, and we immediately set to work putting up exterior and interior walls. By the end of the day, we had already begun to put up the trusses. What began as a concrete slab looked like a house by the afternoon.
As the week progressed the list of our completed tasks grew exponentially. We prepared the walls for sheet rock, put in doors and windows, nailed in hurricane clips, put up insulation and siding and installed the roof and subfacia. Before the trip, most of us didn't even know what subfacia or hurricane clips were, but after a lot of nailing we threw around construction terms like pros.
All of the Habijax volunteers and professionals we met were enthusiastic and supportive. A generous member of the Habijax board even invited all the volunteers in the Collegiate Challenge over to his home for dinner. On the site, the staff and seasoned veteran volunteers helped us to nail, drill, saw, level and plumb our way through the house, which we put up in record time. Among the volunteers who came out to help us were two high-level executives from Budweiser. They turned out to be extraordinary roofers. We worked much faster than most volunteers, owed largely to the dedication and organization of our construction manager. No one could believe that by the end of a week a dozen inexperienced college students had framed a house.
The Hopkins group had many advantages over the other Collegiate Challenge groups, due to the efforts of the student leaders on the trip, senior Katie Ridgway and sophomore Brendan Costigan. Besides having our own house to work on, we had much better accommodations than the other groups. We didn't pay for lunch, as our leaders arranged to have local businesses donate it. Katie, a Jacksonville native, took us to interesting places to visit and eat after we finished for the day, while the other groups settled for McDonalds.
Florida was full of college students in March, but how many had a Spring Break that was not only fun, but memorable and fulfilling as well? To see the physical product of a week's worth of work was truly an amazing experience. By now the interior of Winnie's home should be finished and soon she'll move in. It feels great to have assisted Winnie achieve her goal of owning her own home and to have aided Habitat for Humanity in eliminating substandard housing. I can't imagine a better Spring Break.
For more information, check out http://www.jhu.edu/habitat.
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