Marshall students use spring break to build homes for families

Seven students from Marshall University are traveling to Franklin, W.Va., during spring break to participate in the 2010 Collegiate Challenge Program with Almost Heaven Habitat for Humanity.

"We will be building apartment buildings or single family homes," said Cyndy Hardwick, coordinator of the group and minister of missions and ministries at the Fifth Avenue Baptist Church.

The buildings are a development of southern style homes in the Franklin district that provide individual family units, said Karen Laird, full-time volunteer center host of the Almost Heaven Habitat for Humanity.

"We are currently working on a special project, the River Bend Gardens, a development that will give 15 families homes," Laird said. "We started the project last fall and have the two buildings up with the roofs on."

The funding for the infrastructure for this development was made by a partnership with the West Virginia Housing Development Fund and the Housing and Urban Development's Self-Help Housing Opportunity Program, according to the Almost Heaven Habitat for Humanity Web site.

Collegiate Challenge is a year-round alternative break program that offers groups of five or more students the opportunity to visit one of the 250 host affiliates throughout the U.S. Students spend one week working with the local affiliate, the local community and families to help eliminate poverty housing in the area, according to the Habitat for Humanity Web site.

"I actually have participated at the collegiate challenge for several years and thought I should get Marshall students to participate," Hardwick said.

The Fifth Avenue Baptist Church provided the $150 per person donation for the group of ten, Hardwick said. The church is also providing $600-700 in food for the week.

"The $150 donation they give goes toward building supplies for the Habitat house," Laird said. "We don't charge them for staying here at the volunteer center." 

Two other universities will help with the build. Forty high school students from Country Day School in Bryn Mawr, Penn. and Syracuse University's Habitat for Humanity Club.

"I like the age group of young adults and I look forward to it," Hardwick said.

Kimberly Bradley can be contacted at bradley82@marshall.edu.