Everyone

Everyone deserves a decent place to live, and everyone can do something today to help make that possible for another family.

Youkhanna, Habitat Wake County homeowner and advocate

I tell people in the grocery, in church, wherever I go, how Habitat for Humanity has changed my life. I am not throwing my money away. It is just a great feeling for me and my family to have this house. I tell everyone I meet that they need to be ambassadors for Habitat. I will do that for the rest of my life. I want to help Habitat help other families.

Alex Kaul, Habitat Seattle/King County community engagement coordinator and AmeriCorps alum

There are so many families that I have interacted with since coming to Habitat. One comes to mind.

Yes, they had an apartment. Yes, they had a place to live. But the roof leaked, and there was water visibly running down the walls any time it rained. And so there was mold in their walls and their carpeting, and they were taking their children to the hospital several times a year with extreme asthma attacks and horrible respiratory issues.

That family moved into a Habitat house about a year ago. We talked to them a couple days ago, and they were like, “We haven’t been to the hospital since.” Habitat cured their illnesses, literally, by helping them build a safe and healthy house to live in.

It’s things like that that really stand out to me because I think a lot of times it’s easy to have the perspective of, “Yeah, but they have a roof over their head.”

Just because people have access to housing does not mean that it is safe, decent or affordable to them.

Natalie Martinez, volunteer

From my job as an architect to volunteering with Habitat, home building has always interested me because the places we live become the backdrops to the stories of our lives.

I can’t talk about housing without talking about children or my own childhood. My mother was a single parent, at times struggling to make ends meet. Like Habitat families, she had a deep desire to improve her life situation for herself and her children and a willingness to make a home for herself, however modest it might have seemed to others.

Throughout my professional life, my volunteerism and financial support has gone to nonprofits that serve women and children. When I learned about an opportunity to build in Guatemala through one of Habitat’s Global Village volunteer trips, it seemed like the perfect fit that brought together my personal and professional interests.

I focused on the trip as a work activity and underestimated how personally meaningful it would be. At the beginning of the week, one of the future homeowners prayed that the work we were about to do would be a blessing to us, as it would be for them. I had never thought of work as a form of a blessing, but those words stayed with me and resonated even more by the end of the week.

We’re looking forward to the next Global Village trip so that I can enlist even more people to join me on this deeply rewarding home-building journey. I like that with every house I design or build, I’m a part of someone else’s story of success.

Phun, Habitat Cambodia homeowner

I live with freedom.

Nahla Rajan, donor and volunteer

I would encourage anyone who has ever given or is thinking about giving to Habitat to go to a build. If you want to actually see what your money is doing, go to one of those builds.

It’s really meeting these people and hearing their stories and hearing how their lives have changed as a result of having a home. That’s really what brought it home to me.

Kavanagh Hewitt, volunteer

I really love Habitat’s mission, and I like that Habitat homeowners are out there doing the work, too. Habitat is all about a hand up, not a handout.

It is a great way to meet new people. You learn a lot of good skills. And with Habitat, you get to help your community out and make it a better place.

Melissa Estrada, volunteer

In Nicaragua, the family was with us every day that we were there. It was a really great experience to get to work with them.

The woman who owned the land, she was touching the bricks as we were putting them down. Every day she’d see her house growing.

At the end of each build day, we had a big bring-it-on-home session where we sat around and talked about our experience that day and how it made it us feel — and how much we understood the impact we were having.

Peter Znika, Habitat Chicago construction manager

Just prior to my beginning here at Habitat, my son had graduated from Indiana State University with an education degree. He got his first job at kind of an underprivileged school that had a lot of underprivileged kids. It was a pretty rough school. He would come home and was pretty disgruntled after a couple of weeks of school.

He was telling me stories about how he turns his back to write on the board, and the next thing you know, they’re walking across desks. He said he spent about 90 percent of his time in the classroom just trying to get the kids wrangled in. So, I was getting pretty upset when I was hearing that.

Peter’s son then explained how many of his students would often spend one night at one relative’s home, and then the next night with another relative, how they didn’t have a stable place to call their own.

When he starts explaining the story of these kids, I was upset thinking about how these kids don’t have a home to go to. That struck a chord with me.

This is my calling. Quite frankly, I think God put me here. How could I say no?

Matthias, growing up in a Greenwood Area Habitat home

My mom worked really hard to get this house.

Dan Biller, volunteer

We work on a lot more than a house when the whole neighborhood gets involved. Other homeowners see what’s going on, and that inspires them to take more of an interest in their own homes. It is great to see what we can do for an individual homeowner — and equally as satisfying to see what we can do for the community as a whole.

Your financial support, your voice and your time will help more families like Youkhanna’s, Phun’s and Matthias’ achieve the strength, stability and independence they need to build better lives. Donate today!