I could sense the excitement as we rolled into Winston-Salem, North Carolina. After a fifteen month pause in Habitat For Humanity's Care-A-Vanner builds, the program started back up at the beginning of June. Doug could swing his hammer once again, and we soon noticed that Baby Beest could hang out with her Ram ProMaster van relatives. These vans are the ''cool'' kind of relatives ... decked out with bright slogans painted on their sides and filled with all sorts of fun construction tools. It was finally time to get back into the ''swing'' of house-building once again as we practiced our DIY skills with Habitat for Humanity of Forsyth County.
Kindness Improves Local Living Situations
one house at a time!
Our Care-a-Vanner team members arrived from different parts of the country. For a few of them, it would be their first Habitat build. Others had quite a bit of construction experience to share. By combining all of our SKILLS, we helped dry-in two houses with a roof, windows, doors, siding, and front porch over the course of our two week build.
But it was the KILLS of our team, that is, each team member's kindness that helped future homeowner, Ron, realize that he would soon have a much improved local living situation for himself and his three teenage grandsons.
Kindness was shared by ...
first time CAVers, Jerry and Michael,
who enthusiastically jumped right in
to work on finishing up the back porch,
Americorp volunteer, Cairo, who could
out-haul and out-hammer us all, yet
was quick to praise and encourage us on,
Mary Ann, who used sheer determination
to drive huge bolts through concrete
in order to secure the house,
Morty, who welcomed and worked
beside a new local volunteer,
Doug, who is always happiest when he can
use the framing and roofing skills that his
dad taught him so many years ago,
and retired firefighter, Nancy, who could still
be found on top of a ladder brightening up
our world with her smile and positive attitude.
But the question remained in my mind ... What sort of useful SKILLS do I have to share?
The answer came when I looked inside the work vans of site supervisors, Walt and Jake.
The vans were a bit unorganized, to put it mildly.
Living in a van of the same size, I am well aware of the challenges of keeping it orderly, so I let my kindness show by spending the first few days of our build cleaning out and organizing their vans. That favorite utility knife that was lost?? It's now found and back in Walt's tool belt. The scattered hardhats and other volunteer supplies?? All together in the new bin constructed from scrap wood.
Walt and Jake work long hours and have the important job of overseeing all of us volunteers. They shouldn't have to waste precious time trying to search for the tools that they need. After I was done, they were pretty much able to quickly find whatever tool they needed. I jokingly told them that they only had to keep their vans organized for the two weeks that we are working with them. But judging by their big smiles upon seeing the spiffed-up vans, I have a feeling that it will last a little bit longer than that.
As our work days continued, we had plenty of opportunity to practice new construction skills like ...
securing trusses.
hanging vinyl siding,
and boxing in porch beams.
And we also had the opportunity to get to know a great group of friends who can cook as well as they construct.
Kindness (to) Improve Local Living Situations
