Senior Leadership serves Habitat for Humanity

Ready and willing to put their handy skills to good use this past Friday, April 12, members of senior leadership spent their day helping remodel homes for Habitat for Humanity. The group split up into two teams and tackled two separate homes in the Waterloo area. From 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., the leadership group performed various construction tasks.

Senior Leadership member Katie Friedel works on mudding the basement of a Habitat for Humanity home in the Waterloo area. (Lindsey Davis photo)

“Some of the jobs we did involved moving and sorting garbage into the dumpster, putting up water proofers for thwarting windows on the garage, sawing off bushes, pulling out a fence, clearing concrete out of the basement and putting new boards on the bottom of the garage,” leadership member Emma Karns said.

The team volunteering at the other home in Waterloo had slightly different projects to tackle.

“Personally, I helped demolish a shed and hung up some plywood with my boy, Greg Powers, but other people worked on mudding the basement, hanging up drywall and sweeping/cleaning the house,” senior Jackson Nichols said.

Homeowners being assisted by Habitat for Humanity must put  300 hours of work into their homes as a source of down payment. Because of this, senior leadership members volunteering got to meet the homeowners they were helping out.

“It was impacting to see the selflessness that the volunteers displayed and humbling to see how good we actually have it. It was also awesome to use our time and effort to affect someone else in a positive way,” Nichols said.

Nearly everyone who volunteered felt some sort of reward from giving up time to help someone in need.

“This was an amazing opportunity to give back. It made me realize that I’m lucky, and it was really amazing to put in a hard day’s work for someone,” senior Zach Harvey said.

“This impacted me personally because I am so fortunate to have a roof over my head. To have the family be thankful for my working on their house is a really neat feeling. I learned a lot about myself too as we worked on this Habitat for Humanity home,” Karns said.