The Collegian

Issue date: 2/5/09 Section: News

Media Credit: Liz Essley Hillsdale College students helped renovate this Jonesville house. They worked on the interior, and affixed shutters. The house will be finished this spring.

Habitat for Humanity community and college volunteers have almost completed a facelift on a single mother's Jonesville house. It is the chapter's first "rehab" of a house - giving rebirth to a broken home.

"It looks like a brand new house is being built," said sophomore John Hann, Habitat for Humanity GOAL leader.

Volunteers replaced the floors, installed a bathtub and red decorative shutters, repainted, fixed wall spacing issues and repaired ventilation and electricity.

A young boy and his single mother, a Hillsdale College employee, will inhabit the house when it is completely finished this spring.

About seven or eight Hillsdale students helped with the project almost every weekend last semester. The community has been working on the house since last summer.

Hann said Hillsdale volunteers made the difference.

"We sometimes double or triple their workforce. Construction goes way faster," Hann said, adding that the head of the chapter had told him construction progress would be much further behind without the help of the students.

"I really like the feel of a volunteer operation where you can actually see the effects of your work in the community," said freshman Nora Wood, who started volunteering with Habitat for Humanity last semester.

Hann leads his team out on Saturday mornings, coming back in time for lunch. He said most of their work doesn't require construction knowledge. So far they've helped primed and filled some holes in walls, finished installing the bathtub, attached the shutters and fixed floorboards.

"It was a lot of fun because you always get covered in paint and dust," Wood said.

Now that the group has almost finished the Jonesville project, Habitat for Humanity may begin working on building a new home from ground up in Waldron, Mich. for a family of nine, but the details have not yet been confirmed.

In the meantime, Hann is planning a fundraiser for the local chapter.

"Working with the community Habitat, one of the first things I've realized is that they don't have a lot of money," he said.

He has assembled a team of eight people to collect cans across campus. He hopes to begin the project later this week.

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