Dunham High Service Day

I guess I just say "thank you" a lot here.

Anyway, twenty-eight juniors from Dunham High School came to paint houses and perform some light carpentry for us on Fountain. If you haven't felt old enough recently, spend some time with a bunch of high school students. Their (I forget, is it "there" or "they're"?) entire high school spends two days a year performing community service. We were lucky enough to get this group and they did an excellent job and seemed to enjoy helping.

Thanks for helping us out. Come back in March!

Scott Family Dedication

Apologies for my delinquency.

On January 21, we dedicated the last house that was partially built when I first arrived. This is the first house that Habitat for Humanity of Greater Baton Rouge built in neighboring Livingston Parish, and it now belongs to Cindy (she's pictured with her arm in the air).


The community turned out to celebrate with her along with the board responsible for coordinating this build.

This is the last of our old business (blitz homes aside) and it clears the way for our new builds that will begin in March.


Congratulations to Cindy and congratulations to Habitat.

City Year

I get to learn a lot about our country now. I learn that all over the country there are Americans who are dedicated to helping their brother and sister. AmeriCorps flourish throughout our land, and today we were joined by forty-something 18-24 year olds who are part of City Year, an organization dedicated to community service and helping develop our nation's youth through tutoring, mentoring and developing leaders. The reason they helped today was to celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. Day by 'taking a day on' rather than off.

They are new to this community, but not a new organization. City Year Louisiana was planned before Hurricane Katrina struck this area, but they completely ramped up this new site in the aftermath. They've been reported on by local media, and I think they are performing an invaluable service. Not only do they help our local schools with their tutoring and mentoring, but they are developing those in their ranks by giving them a chance to build and develop themselves.

Browse through their website and you will find a link to this op-ed in the Boston Globe. Boston is where the organization was founded. The op-ed suggests that our country may be ready for a new type of GI Bill, where the government rewards those who understand civic service is a great aid in building our nation by first building our communities.

Thanks to these young people, all of the houses on Fountain Drive (part of Operation Home Delivery) are now painted. Thank you guys for helping today. It was an honor to meet you.

netiquette

I just want to say that I have no idea what I'm doing with a blog. When the world-wide web was young, I think it was ok to link to other sites. But now, it seems 'hot-linking' may be frowned upon? Maybe it has to do with pointing to someone else's site with a sizeable download or something, rather than just text.

Anyway, before I get yelled at for doing something wrong - I just wanted to say I'm sorry if I am. I just don't know any better.

Also, blogger.com's spell checker doesn't know what a 'blog' is. heh.

Dedications and Upcoming Year

I'm quite excited about the new year. It's started off very well with Saturday's dedications and I've been recently inspired about ways to improve this site.




First, we dedicated five houses on Saturday on Faith Court. Faith Court is a street in Baton Rouge that this Habitat affiliate created by joining two dead-end roads. There are now thirteen total houses at this location and we'll begin building the final two in March.

The new home owners took part in a ceremony where they were presented with keys, house warming items, flowers and prayer. The houses were dedicated and many from the community showed up this last day to take part in fellowship and welcome these new house owners into their new homes. We couldn't have asked for better weather or a better day.

Here are two of our home owners, Omeshia (left) and Yolanda, pictured after the dedication ceremony.
Ok, as I mentioned I'm excited about this year. I've got a few trips planned and a mystery guest coming to visit. No, I'm not talking about celebrities and it's not a trip to Cannes or the Academy Awards, but it's exciting to me. In a few weeks I'll be broadcasting live from another location in the gulf and later this spring I hope to report that a special group of volunteers I've encouraged will be coming to help. This should all lead up to the mid-summer big event!

New Year

2006 has begun (what a lame sentence. filler, pure filler...) This weekend we will dedicate five houses on Faith Court. This week is busy with last-minute punch lists and cleanup. After the dedication on Saturday, I'll provide photographs of the houses and their owners.

This is vital to us as it represents unfinished business from 2005. These houses were started before the hurricanes hit this region, and we lost a lot of the volunteer support who were helping with these builds.

Of incidental note, since we are not in our regular build season now (it won't start back up until March) I'm trying to spend a couple of weeks with another affiliate in the Gulf region to help with their hurricane recovery. When the details are finalized, I'll provide that information.