This Saturday, I volunteered a day at Habitat for Humanity. Overall, it was a good experience for me, and I’ll likely do it again. A quick summary of the day... (especially for those who might be interested in doing it themselves)

I had signed up to do it with a group from my church.  We were supposed to meet at 7 am at the church parking lot.  I woke up a little before 6 (most definitely not a normal hour for me to rise on a Saturday) – it was pouring rain.  I considered various excuses to back out, but decided to go and sort of hoped that I’d get there and it would be canceled.  Got to the church at 7 and the rain was dying down a bit (still drizzling), and there was no backing down – off to the site we went (9 of us). 

Habitat builds about 20 houses a year in St. Louis.  Apparently, last year all the houses were together on one plot of land cleared for the purpose.  This year, the 20 lots were scattered in a 2 or 3 block area, amidst existing housing (mostly run-down), in an inner-North County suburb.  Our group went to a central staging area adjacent to a fenced compound where they were storing all the building materials and tools.  Despite the weather, there were a lot of volunteers buzzing about – perhaps 100 people.  Saturdays are the main volunteering day, every week from roughly April through October, with smaller groups of volunteers on Wednesdays and Fridays.

We spent about 20 minutes at the initial staging area while assignments were sorted out.  Even after we were assigned our first house to work on, there was a lot of standing around – too many volunteers, not enough coordinators.  By about the 2 hour mark, I had only worked about 30 minutes.

However, the day got better as it went along.  The rain stopped early, and after a couple hours, we had steady sunshine the whole day.  Similarly, after a bit too much shuffling around early, we got to our main assignment – working on foundations for two adjacent houses.  It was real work, but not overly strenuous, and by the end of the day, I felt like we’d been quite productive. 

Most of the foundation work was done walking around a narrow scaffolding about 5 feet up, prepping the forms for the cement to be poured into.  There were a few women in our group who were skittish about working on the scaffolding, and so didn’t really get to do a lot for the day (they handed things up and down).  The foundations are obviously just about the first things in, and apparently, the later stages of carpentry, painting and the like are more amenable to folks who want a less physical or risky experience.

At the end of the day, it was nice to see a significant amount of progress across the 3 houses that we worked on.  The houses are built by a mixture of unskilled volunteer labor (us), and skilled craftsmen, paid by Habitat (for cement pouring, plumbing, and electrical).  In doing the foundation work, we did everything except pour the cement – the before and after prep work probably constitute 70% of the job, anyways.

At the end of the day, I was tired, sunburned (the early rain had led me to skip my sunscreen), and had a few bruises, but I also had a nice feeling of accomplishment that you don’t get typing on a keyboard all day.  I enjoyed talking with the others in our group – they were from my church, but I hadn’t really known most of them prior to that day.  Overall, the experience gets a thumbs up from me.

Other notes:

We didn’t need to bring any personal tools – Habitat supplied everything (except food for lunch – we brown-bagged it).  You can also volunteer for Habitat directly, without going through a secondary organization.  Habitat’s site says you have to take an orientation class, but none of us did, and frankly, there was nothing in the work that an orientation class would have been necessary for.  We did have to sign a waiver – not surprising – can’t sue Habitat if you get hurt.  In general, there was a positive vibe running through the day, and all the people working there – we were all part of a good thing, and it didn’t feel like work.