At week's end, volunteers and soon-to-be homeowners in Valdosta, Ga., had completed 25 houses.

Transforming Through Teamwork
by Shawn Reeves

Nighttime can lurk in the projects like a hooded thug. Habitat homeowner Stephanie Doe can attest to that ... and so can her daughters, Victoria, 15, and Jasmine, 9.

Because they shared a bedroom on "that" side of the apartment, the girls were always first to hear the gunfire. And when they did, they knew to dash for the living room or for their mother's bed. Drug dealers slinked about after dark, littering the ground with bottles and fast food wrappers, and the air with noise. "They come from somewhere else," Doe says, "and they think, 'Well, this is just the projects; they don't take care of it around here.' "

There was fighting after dark. Profanities ricocheted off buildings and hung in the night air like smoke from a firecracker. Men urinated on the building just feet from Doe's door; some even slept on her porch.

"In the projects, we have to go inside when it gets dark," Doe says, "because that's when all the people come around with their fighting and drugs and everything. We can sit on the porch in the daytime, but when night comes, I have to say, 'OK, everyone inside.' "

For seven years, the Does made the best of a tenuous and somewhat captive situation. Doe wanted to move but couldn't afford to. "I couldn't just take the girls out of one bad situation and put them in another," she says. She tried to find better housing but was always turned down.

"You never adapt, but you get used to what you're doing," she says, "to where you're living. There are so many things to worry about [in the projects], but God has put us in a better place now."

That "better place" is a Habitat house and the quiet subdivision the Doe family now calls home.

	Greg Johnson of Valdosta Technical College contributes his time and talents. The JCWP in Valdosta, Ga., provided a surge to the communitywide effort to eradicate substandard housing.

Doe's is one of 25 houses built during this year's Jimmy Carter Work Project in Valdosta, Ga. Volunteers from 39 states and eight countries joined local volunteers to build decent, affordable housing with families in need. And like the homeowners and volunteers themselves, the housing needs were diverse.

Patricia Peak and her three sons, for example, were forced to separate almost two years ago when a fire destroyed their already-insufficient house on Thanksgiving morning. They lived with extended family, but no one had room for all four of them. In the Peaks' case, the Habitat home means not only a decent place to live, but also a reunion long overdue.

Another homeowner, Theresa Enyeart, lived with her two children, two teenage sisters, her mother and stepfather--seven people in less than 1,200 square feet, five in a single bedroom. With hardly enough room to turn around, Enyeart sought a solution and found it with Habitat for Humanity. Construction on her Habitat house was a shared event as family members worked every day on her house. One brother traveled from New Jersey to help build. Another came from Japan to help Enyeart move in.

The cooperation Enyeart experienced was merely a reflection of the larger collaboration that made the weeklong project possible.

As a Certified 21st Century Challenge Community, Valdosta's leadership has committed to working cooperatively with various local groups: the local Habitat affiliate, Valdosta State University, churches, businesses, government agencies and other interested partners. A program of Habitat for Humanity International, the 21st Century Challenge is an initiative in which communities assess the housing need locally, then establish a plan to eliminate substandard housing by a specific date, typically within 20 years.

Ralph Jackson, executive director for Valdosta-Lowndes County Habitat for Humanity, says the community embraced the "Challenge" concept enthusiastically from the start.

"It was just a perfect fit with the right timing," Jackson says. "The beauty is that a lot of us knew each other already, and we were in positions where we could put together a coalition. It was just one of those divine providences."

The result? The KeyWe Affordable Housing Coalition, composed of 16 different groups, including the Community Development department with the city of Valdosta. Mara Register serves as director for that department and agrees with Jackson about the willingness of local groups working together toward a common goal.

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