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.

Holiday Season

We're off for Christmas and the New Year. In the event that anyone was hoping for an update, I hope to post after the New Year when I return to Baton Rouge. A belated Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all.

Spring Build Season

I guess things are really ramping up.

This year Habitat for Humanity of Greater Baton Rouge built about 20 houses in three parishes (including the 4 that were built during this last blitz). We really are trying to grow, because we are starting 20 houses in the first half of 2006.

March

• 1 Catholic Build (8 week)
• 2 Youth Build (3 week) - Valley Park/Wells St
• 1 Greek Build (1 week) - Cross Creek

April

• 1 Exxon/Mobil Build (4 week)
• 1 Thrivent Build (4 week) - Faith Court

May

• 4 West Side Build (1 week)
• 4 Buffini Build (1 week)

June

• 6 Home Builder Blitz (1 week)

If you add that all up, it should be 20. I'll edit this post as I learn the streets and locations of the builds. The good news is that we've been approved for more staff - so observant types should recognize that we have our work cut out for us. I don't mind mentioning that I'm more than a little afraid, but we've had a lot of willing support and I'm confident that we'll get more. I sure hope to see some of our new friends back...

Estelle Has a New House!

This past Saturday, we dedicated a house in Port Allen to Estelle Franklin and her family. The keys were presented to Estelle by a representative from the house sponsor, Entergy. It was rainy and cold and we tracked mud into her house all day, but I still think Estelle enjoyed it. It's still overwhelming to be present at such an event, but it's nice to see the end result - not just the house, but the owner's new home.

Estelle is the lady not wearing the Christmas hat.

Back to Fountain Drive

Fountain Drive is the home of our four houses from the blitz build. If I tell you a little secret, please don't spread it around - we didn't quite finish all of the houses. So, today a group of volunteers from Philip Morris, USA came as part of their Southwest Regional Manager's Meeting. They're having a three-day offsite/conference here in the lovely Red Stick and about forty of their sales force came to help us finish these houses on Fountain.

The cool part of today is that I had a Gwen & Naka moment. I led four separate siding teams (all at once) to finish the siding on two houses. Gwen & Naka were my two incredible task leaders in Kauai where I worked on a Global Village Build in September, and they're two of the reasons I came to do what I'm doing. I want to be like them when I grow up.

Anyway, about half of the group wanted to work on siding (who can blame them when we had painting to do inside?) I think I was successful bluffing my way through and letting them think I knew what I was talking about, and we finished the siding (and most of the soffit) on the remaining two houses! Thank you for the help!

(You really can't take photos of a build without taking one of someone using a miter saw...)

Oh, and I wasn't sure we were on Fountain until about 1:30 today, when it started raining. Then I knew we were back.

In the Media

I let my camera relax this week. However, we've been in the local media quite a bit and even made national news with Operation Home Delivery. Here are a few of the links:

[video]
Today show
WAFB

[print]
WBRZ News 2/The Advocate
WAFB

Leap Of Faith

You know, there are truly amazing people in this world. I had the pleasure of meeting one today, Seth Kujat. Seth has a mission, and it is to put a roof on at least one Habitat house in every state in our country in one year. He started earlier this year and just got to our state. Louisiana is his 33rd state and his 45th roof, or something pretty close to that.

Seth is someone you should meet. He's doing this on his own to motivate and inspire other people to achieve greater things. You can read about him on his website www.leapoffaithroofing.com.

Anyway, he completed the roof on our house in Port Allen and I got to work with him all day. Working with him, I had probably my best day at work so far. Heck, quitting my job to come do this doesn't even seem like much in comparison.

Seth set out to do this on his own, lives out of his van, brings his own tools and for someone so young, brings a lot of knowledge, experience and inspiration. I can only encourage anyone who is impressed by his quest to help his cause by donating to him. Seth has a passion and it is an inspiring sight to see.

Blitz Build Completed!

The blitz build ended on Saturday and it was an overwhelming success. What I mean by that was it was a) overwhelming and b) a success. For the week, we had a group of truly dedicated volunteers from all over our country. Volunteers from Tennessee, Kentucky, Florida, North and South Carolina, Ohio and Louisiana (and probably one or two states that I missed) showed up to build four of the Operation Home Delivery Houses for victims of hurricane Katrina.

The conditions were not the most favorable: we received four houses, but some were a different floor plan than what we anticipated (most likely a shipping error, although the FedEx homes arrived just fine - go figure...) and we had a great deal of rain, which led to a greater amount of mud on the first few days of the build.

Despite this, we were able to provide Traemel Day with the keys to her house at a dedication ceremony on Saturday. Hopefully one day, she'll have a few neighbors.

During the build, one of the volunteers offered me some server space so I could publish more of my photos. If there seems to be interest in this, I'll probably do it.

On Friday night, I was invited to visit the out-of-town volunteers who were staying at the FEMA tents. It was impressive to see the facilities and rumors of the meals are legendary.

Thank you everyone who participated. You are all an inspiration to me. It was wonderful to meet the AmeriCorps from the other states (oh yeah, have I mentioned I'm an AmeriCorps?) as well as the volunteers who just felt the need to be here and help. I've learned a lot this week about how to build but I also learned that there are others committed to the same principles I've dedicated this year to, and that helps me a lot. Thank you.

Just a few candids of the volunteers for the week.There were many more, and I'll try to share those soon. I guess since it's my blog, you have to suffer a few photos of me - my mom likes to see them.

seriously, isn't Natalie Morales beautiful?

others from across the country left messages as well.

I briefly wanted to say 'thank you' to the girls of Scotch Guard, a service organization from LSU. They can paint, caulk, carry and smile and they helped us get that much closer with the women's build. See, my job isn't that bad, I get to work with happy people.

As I was recently reminded I haven't updated in a while. We spent all last week preparing for our six day blitz build as part of Operation Home Delivery. We began framing the first house last Monday and made it look good for the television cameras.





This house is being built for Traemel Day, a New Orleans resident who has been displaced to Baton Rouge. She's a great cook (she made us a wonderful cake for Thanksgiving) and has shown up everyday on site. She's now also a celebrity, having been featured on the Today Show by anchor and correspondent Natalie Morales.






I've got more photos of the build that I will put up once this thing is done, but here are a couple of where we started and where we ended yesterday.





Finally, here's most of the construction crew - Mike, Cory and myself.
This photo was taken after our Thanksgiving lunch and we're accompanied by Lynn Clark. Lynn, our Development Director, is in charge of our public outreach and is a wonderful woman. In fact, I really like having my photo taken with her, see...

She too is a television celebrity now, as she was interviewed by several television stations during our media blitz last Monday.

Let me try to keep all of this information straight.

Habitat for Humanity of Greater Baton Rouge just received a check for about $391,000 from the Blank Family Foundation, owners of the Atlanta Falcons. This check amounted to a generous donation that was probably led by Warrick Dunn, of the Atlanta Falcons. Warrick has been a generous contributor to the Baton Rouge area, and this is no exception. I believe the check is intended to go to Katrina victims and most certainly this should allow at least six new homes to be built.

There are four (maybe it's six) "houses-in-a-box" headed down the Mississippi that have passed through Memphis. These are the homes for the blitz build that begins on November 27. We have had a shortage of drywall in this area and when this was explained to Habitat International, they were able to get Lowe's to donate enough material for four (maybe it's six) houses. The material was loaded on the barge in Memphis and we still expect to see it next Monday.

Finally, we received word that a Chicago-based firm that held their annual retreat here this past year (rather than have boring meetings, they all pitched in and helped remodel our Restore), wants to return and help build houses this time, again for Katrina victims. Note to any corporate types, the employees that attended the retreat thought the remodeling event was the best retreat they had ever had. Other note to corporate types, you can sponsor your very own house for the bargain basement price of $56,000.

The last two days have been exciting. Friday, I worked with my first group of volunteers from a Methodist church in Denham Springs. They turned out to help Cindy, the homeowner, with her house. I met her, and was immediately inspired by her. Working with a group of twenty-seven volunteers was a bit overwhelming at first, people were asking me for guidance!!!

Today, I met Estelle, the homeowner in Port Allen. Again, a lovely, deserving woman with a wonderful story. Not nearly as many volunteers showed up as yesterday, but the ones that did worked hard to compensate.

This post will be brief, but I wanted to share this - I have worked five days this week, and every day at least one person (often more) tells me "thank you". It's really nice to be in this kind of environment. I think this is the reward, and it really is worth it.

as promised, here are some photos:

First is the build at Port Allen. There is currently only one house under construction, although I believe the two next door are Habitat Houses and the lot next to this one will become a Habitat House in the spring.



I've provided a photo of the Mississippi River Bridge above the Port of Baton Rouge. In the spring, more of the "Houses In A Box" will be shipped down the Mississippi to be assembled here, in Baton Rouge.



Again, Faith Court is our largest current build. Five homes are under construction now joining the eight that have already been built. Next spring, the final two will be built - rounding out the fifteen. The first two houses shown here are the two from the women's build (the ones that stood up to Katrina).



the next photo just shows how cool it is to create and name your own street. In the background, you can see some of the other houses that have already been completed.



Finally, this is the house at Denham Springs - the first build in this area.