Holy Week Habitat Style
- By Shawn Reeves -

With the second Easter Morning Build in Americus, Ga., March 27 through April 4, Sumter County moved "one significant step closer" to eliminating poverty housing in the area, says Americus-Sumter County HFH executive director Desi Wynter.

Nearly 1,500 volunteers from across the United States and Canada spent Holy Week building houses with 25 Sumter County partner families. This was the second Easter Morning Build blitz in the Habitat Easter Morning Community. The residential area eventually will contain 142 houses (20 of which were built during last year's EMB).

"It's always amazing to see so many people come from all over to help someone they don't know build a house," says Nathan Poole, who with his wife, Brenda, and their six children have settled into their new Habitat house. "[Habitat volunteers] are some of the best people you could ever meet, and words can never express our gratitude."

The build is part of the larger Sumter County Initiative, a collaboration of local government, churches, businesses and Americus-Sumter County HFH, that aims to eliminate poverty housing in the county by the end of next year.

The EMB goes a long way toward eliminating substandard housing locally, but it also has an indirect effect, says Wynter.

"It serves as an awareness-spreading type of build," he says. "People come to Americus from across the country; they see what's going on here with SCI and they take that enthusiasm home with them. They realize that eliminating poverty housing is an attainable goal."


Shawn Reeves is a writer with Habitat for Humanity International.

For more information, please visit our Easter Morning Build pages at www.habitat.org/build/emb


Reprinted from Habitat World Magazine, August/September, 1999.
This article may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
©1999 Habitat for Humanity International