The Publication of Habitat for Humanity International | April/May 2004
| The Publication of Habitat for Humanity International | April/May 2004 |
|
Connections: Habitat Makes Connections, Builds Relationships In 92 countries, Habitat for Humanity staff and volunteers create hope by overcoming barriers…and building houses.
A Habitat for Humanity build site is hardly a boring place to be--especially for the novice carpenter. Hammers echo across the lot, keeping steady tempo with the whirr of saws. House leaders bark instructions, caring strangers work to find a rhythm--and a steady dust cloud hovers above it all. One's first encounter with a Habitat build can be a sensory overload. Quickly, however, nerves begin to settle. Habitat veterans take "beginners" under their compassionate wings. Relationships unfold like squares of sod, measured in the shared sweat, blisters and resolve to build a decent house with a family who needs it. Personal connections become inevitable and enrich the experience even beyond what might sometimes be expected. Uniting on a Habitat build site, Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland have defied years of sectarian conflict; Christians, Jews and Muslims join hands at numerous interfaith builds in the United States and across the world. Teen-agers work with retirees, black churches with white, rich with poor. Clarence Jordan, founder of Koinonia Farm, the birthplace of Habitat for Humanity, once said, "What the poor need is not charity, but capital, not caseworkers but co-workers." Everyone involved in the Habitat movement, then, is a "co-worker." Habitat volunteers around the world often recount their on-site experiences, relaying how those encounters bring new insight into what it truly means to connect, one to another. In a first-person account of her building experience in Africa, volunteer and team leader Lisa Kelly wrote, "It's a very powerful thing to sit down with a person from a different culture and share time with them, to play football with the children, to try and communicate without great language skills or to taste something new to you. It always strikes me just how alike we all are underneath, with the same basic needs for love, shelter, food and community."
Having spent half his life in the Middle East, and all his professional life in community development there, Philip Griffith, director for Habitat for Humanity in Jordan, says, "Habitat at its best represents the only opportunity that I have ever been offered in the Middle East to work with people." While Griffith concedes the importance of a decent place to live, he says, "The house itself is not the thing that guarantees hope. What guarantees hope is people working together to do something that they could not do by themselves." All over the world, individuals are connecting on Habitat build sites, and they're doing so on levels that alter perceptions, create lasting friendships and enrich life for everyone involved. In the journal she kept while building with Habitat in Tanzania, Caroline Purdy-Valentine wrote, "I realize in coming to Africa the strength of the human spirit. As foreigners in a land that is so new [to us] and fills us with awe, we fight language barriers and uncertainty. ...Two completely different perspectives coming together toward one goal. Volumes are spoken without a word uttered. Fingers point, heads nod, sighs, smiles, laughter, walls ripped out, yet little by little, progress is made, homes are provided and bonds are formed." These bonds transcend culture and country and connect people from across town and from around the world. The Greater Providence (R.I.) affiliate experienced as much while partnering with two families, one from the Dominican Republic, the other from Liberia. "They worked together on their homes for two years with no consideration of which side of the duplex they were working on," says affiliate executive director Herman de Koe. "They were there every Saturday, and now that it's done they will spend their first Christmas in their new homes as neighbors, coming from worlds apart to live together in this Providence, R.I., neighborhood." Habitat build sites are a true equalizer, and the experiences shared there are not quickly forgotten or under-appreciated. Habitat for Humanity Jordan each year hosts a number of work teams from the United States, and Griffith has witnessed the connections people can make by coming together through Habitat. He relays his most memorable experience of last year, recounting what an American woman said after building in Jordan: "I never would have believed that the Arabs were such loving people," she said, "unless I had sweated with them side by side, unless I had seen how much they love their children, unless I had sat down at the table with them, unless I had seen that I have the capacity to discriminate against them as much as they do against me and maybe more." "Habitat serves as a bridge among people who might not otherwise come together," Griffith says, "by providing them an opportunity to forget about their own fears and to focus on someone who doesn't even have a decent place to live." And a decent place to call home holds a value with which everyone can connect. --Also reported by Samantha Schroeder |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| © Habitat for Humanity International | Home | Get Involved | Where We Build | How It Works | True Stories |
