What a fun and totally full-filling day! We all write our checks to charities, churches and fund raisers. While this remains important, there is such a great sense of accomplishment and reward to actually give of our time with sweat labor to help someone in need.
Here are some facts about Habitat for Humanity-Pinellas County that we would like to share with you.
*They have built over 150 homes to date and are working diligently to get to 200+ with 24 homes built per year.
*It takes approximately 6 weeks to build a home and while they have one or 2 paid staff onsite daily during each build, it truly is the volunteers that keep the costs down to make the program work. They do have multiple builds going on in different parts of the county at the same time.
*An average house is about $120,000-$130,000 and many of the appliances and product are donated by local companies.
*All homes are geared towards “green” with energy efficiency
*With a waiting list, each owner has to pre-quality, and while they didn’t go thru those details, you can imagine that they are low income applicants. They put $500 down and agree to 250 hours of “sweat equity” That means they are literally helping to build their own and other’s houses. HH holds the mortgage and they then pay back the loan interest free, again pointing out the importance of volunteers and donations. BTW: They just love cash donations.
At the end, we were all presented with a paycheck which was for 1000 “Thank You’s”
See below some of the comments from our MPI Volunteer Crew
"Hard to know where to start; we were given a beautiful day to do some wonderful work to help perfect strangers. What more could anyone ask for other than to have a great group of people to work beside and we had that too. Thank you for taking the time to make it happen. I’m certain that what we all gave was minor compared to what we all received."
Karn B. Clark, CMP
"I never thought I'd be up on a roof hammering shingles and having fun at that. The added bonus of it being for a good cause and working along side our MPI Friends and the future owner made the day a great day. Thank you to Susan Blair and MPI for putting this opportunity together."
Dori Regulski Mitchen
Thank you to all who volunteered:
Susan Blair
Jason Carroll
Karn Clark
Tara Liaschenko and Jan Weldon
Ivy Peterson & Dale Peterson
Dori Regulski Mitchen
Shelley Smith
TJ Worrell & Ryan Worrell
Charlene Garraway
