Habitat For Humanity

I don't know how many of you will have heard of this, but it is a world wide thing that everyone can get involved in. Basically it involves building houses for people who need them but can't afford them. The recipients have to put significant time (about 150 man hours I think) into someone else's house to qualify, then I think about 250 man hours into their own. When it is done, they still pay mortgage payments, albeit reduced, which helps to buy land for future projects. Many of the home owners continue to give their time to the project going forward.

Hewitt gives me two days of "Hewitt Time For Hewitt Concerns" to do charitable work, and so I chose to spend mine helping this project and learning new skills all at the same time, everyone's a winner!

Last Thursday, I went along with a group from our DTS or PC Support operation, and fellow manager Mike Vega, he is the handsome devil in the pic on the right! We spent the day putting up vinyl siding, finishing off a wall on the side of the house, it was quite a feeling of accomplishment putting in the last piece right at the very peak.


This week, Mike and I were there with a team from the business side of Hewitt (see top pic), mostly TOC, I think, and we were hoping to get some more siding so that we could learn some other techniques and practice too. One of the organisers, who are supplied by Americorp, a girl called Steph, was also hoping that Mike and I would be on siding, after our performance last week, but we ended up on sidewalk duty.

However, I am sure you will see from this pic, that we built the best damn sidewalk you ever saw! We learned about laying the forms, making the curves, the best way to level them, how to ensure water ran off in the right way, etc. All very useful skills in any number of potential future projects.


Both Mike and I agreed that we would definitely volunteer for this more regularly, on weekends and maybe even take some personal time off in the week to do it from time to time. I know when I mentioned this to Lorraine at the beginning of the year she was very interested and so I intend to take her up there sometime too, and get her involved. If she likes it, then I can see her being up there a couple of days a month at least.

They are a great team up there at the Carter Woods site, and if this sort of thing floats your boat, I would definitely recommend a day or two up there. I had great fun and learned two new skills, that I will undoubtedly use in the future, even if just for minor repairs.