Habitat for Humanity plans alternative spring break

Rukshana Jalil Guest Writer

While many Vassar students will be spending their spring breaks with family or having fun in the sun with friends, 26 Vassarions will be building houses for needy families in Sebring, Fla. The students, part of the Vassar chapter of Habitat for Humanity, will travel for 20 hours by car to spend one week helping to construct a house in Sebring.

“The work is just rewarding,” said spring break coordinator Shantanu Vaid ’08.

“It’s not just about making a difference,“ said Torie Eells ’08, Co-President of Vassar’s chapter. “The community is so welcoming that, by the end, you are able to form connections with many people.”

Eells was last involved in a spring break project in her sophomore year, when they worked with a community in Birmingham, Ala. She remembers feeling a sense of wonder when she and her group left after having almost completed an entire house in a week.

“It’s the work we did with our own hands,” Eells recalled. “You never really think about what it takes to build a house.”

Vaid said that on that trip he “got to build a house from the foundation to the roof,” but didn’t need any construction experience. “Any of us can hammer and nail.”

The families who will own the houses are chosen beforehand by Habitat for Humanity International. The houses are then built with no profit added and no interest charged. The payment is based on materials for building, which allow families to have a discounted mortgage.

According to its Web site, Habitat for Humanity projects not only provide homes, but maintain dignity for families who are opposed to taking handouts by having them become involved in the building of their own houses.

Spring break isn’t the only time when the Vassar Chapter of Habitat for Humanity helps families build homes. Almost every weekend, 10 to 15 members of the group’s 50 members go to Newburgh, a town about 40 minutes from Vassar, to help in any of the builds taking place there. Newburgh’s Habitat chapter builds houses every Wednesday and Saturday, rain or shine.

Since it was founded in 1978 by Millard and Linda Fuller, Habitat for Humanity International has built 150,000 houses around the world for families in need. Habitat’s approach is unique in that in addition to volunteers, the family who will live in the house must put in “sweat equity,” hours of work that count toward their eventual home ownership.