Over the course of six days, the Habitat for Humanity Project Week—led by Upper School teachers Andrew Sanchez, Joshua Phipps, and Jonathan Legendre—volunteered within Habitat for Humanity Chicago’s ReStore Division and at one of its Build Sites, explored the West Pullman and Greater Grand Crossing Neighborhoods, and learned from a speaker from the Covenant Project.
“We like the mission of Habitat [for Humanity] and we’ve had good experiences with them in the past,” Mr. Phipps said.
“This kind of service is something I enjoy a lot and something I think is missing from our regular offerings,” Mr. Legendre added.
Mr. Legendre also cited affordability as a reason for the creation of this Project Week: “I believe that there need to be affordable in-town projects.”
On Monday morning, the first day of the Habitat for Humanity project, students watched documentaries providing historical context to housing inequity and outlining practices that have contributed to it. Students were able to explore these topics in further depth through an interactive lecture from a speaker from the Covenant Project the following afternoon.
Students spent Tuesday volunteering at the Habitat for Humanity Chicago Section’s ReStore Division. ReStore is a nonprofit store that runs on donations, mostly selling furniture and home decor. Student and chaperone volunteer tasks mostly involved moving merchandise in preparation for ReStore’s reopening on Wednesday (ReStore is always closed on Tuesdays).
Junior Sanya Arora said that her favorite moment was “probably when we were at Restore and we got to smash a cabinet with a sledgehammer—that was pretty fun.”
On Wednesday, students took an informative tour of West Pullman and Greater Grand Crossing Neighborhoods—organized by Habitat for Humanity Chicago.
Students then spent Thursday through Saturday volunteering at one of Habitat for Humanity’s Chicago build sites.
“I wish that the build site was available earlier in the week, but I’m actually pretty happy with the way we went this year with doing some education on housing inequity at the beginning of the week,” Mr. Legendre said.
Students worked alongside prospective homeowners, as the Habitat for Humanity Chicago branch requires prospective homeowners to volunteer at least 250 hours with the organization.
“My favorite part was meeting the person who the house was going to—it just made it more personal, and it was cool to see how we were helping,” senior Adelaide Taylor said.
“It’s really cool that we’re building houses for people that maybe are underprivileged or don’t have the money to buy certain houses,” Sanya added. “It’s crazy to think that I’d building a house for someone that someone’s gonna live in eventually.”
Students and chaperones’ tasks for volunteering at the Build Site ranged from painting (with rollers and paint brushes), grouting, caulking, spackling, scraping, vacuuming, sweeping, cutting tiles and wood, and installing doors.
“I thought it was just really nice to work together as a team and work with the coordinators and see how much we completed over the week,” sophomore Darina Koedjikova said,
“I thought that it went pretty good,” sophomore Shozib Wasim agreed. “It was fun collaborating with people.”
Mr. Legendre reflected, “[The students] were amazing. Everybody was on time and even in parts that maybe weren’t the most fun everyone had a good attitude. Everyone worked hard, and this was the first year that the coordinators there separated the chaperones from the students because they trusted the students enough. The downside of that is that I got to hang out with the students less.”
