Women Build 2009 week 10 update

Part of what I love about volunteering for Habitat is that it gives people the opportunity to get messy. People who normally wear suits to work show up in old jeans and t-shirts and get happily covered in sawdust. A white-paint hand print on the back of a shirt is like a badge of honor and will always remind the wearer of the day they spent giving back. There’s just something very grounding and satisfying about putting in a day of hard work – digging, measuring, cutting, nailing, painting – and you have visual and tangible results at the end. You know that the wall that you helped paint will soon be covered with the fingerprints of the child living there. This is why so many people volunteer with Habitat, and why I found Lori Swanson, Minnesota’s Attorney General, power sanding the front porch last week.

It was Elected Officials Day – a day specially set aside to give our local and state leaders a different way to serve their community. And on that day, giving back took the form of installing flooring, one of those tasks that make you stop taking floors for granted (you will never look at linoleum the same way after you’ve had the adhesive stuck on your hands for a few days).

I also had the chance to watch (and learn from) TCHFH’s Build Think Act on-site education experience, which Betsy leads after lunch. Through an exercise in which teams of volunteers work together to tie as many knots as they can while losing and gaining different members of the team, the volunteers learn what it may feel like to be a parent or a child who is forced to move from place to place because of a lack of stable housing. Not having that stability can lead to frustration and anxiety, affecting job performance and school performance. Although the curriculum is just a short part of the volunteer day, it adds an extra level of understanding and appreciation for the work Habitat is doing.

Neighborhood volunteers had another chance to work on Basra’s home last week, and other days were sponsored by Team Leaders Tami Reece with Handcuffs and Hammers (Minneapolis Police officers) and Heidi Gesell with BankCherokee – thank you!! Lots of delicious lunches were prepared by Barb McGonigal, Rhonda Speers White, Kris Witsoe and Costco, Kate Taylor-Edwards, and Linda Howitz.

An extra special thanks goes to Barb Zapzalka and Pumphouse Creamery for providing ice cream on four Friday afternoons of the build.

Archives, photos, and more can be found at our website, and head on over to our Facebook page to see even more photos of the build’s progress!

Have a great week!
Andrea

Andrea Cole
Women Build 2009 Women Build Committee Member
Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity

P.S. We still have quite a few open spots on VolunteerHub for skilled volunteers to help with finishing the home in September. Skilled volunteers are people that can accurately use a tape measure, are comfortable with using power tools, and pick up on tasks easily (like the women from BankCherokee are deminstrating in the photos above). So, if you have volunteered with Women Build a few times, you should be qualified. :)