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UC Volunteers Head for Service in Alabama Before Heading Back to School
Photos By: Dottie Stover
Six University of Cincinnati students are planning on flexing some muscle before building on their brainpower when UC starts classes on Sept. 23. The six UC volunteers – in partnership with the UC Center for Community Engagement and Cincinnati Habitat For Humanity, will travel to Lanett, Ala., to complete a housing build and rehabilitation effort launched last month in memory of the late Millard Fuller, the founder of Habitat For Humanity. The UC students will be departing Cincinnati at 8 a.m., Sunday, Sept. 13, from the UC Alumni Center. They’re expected to return at around 6 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 19.
The students are traveling to an area that has been in decline since the 1980s, when most of the textile manufacturing industries closed in the area. Habitat founder Millard Fuller, a native of Lanett, first issued a Habitat For Humanity challenge in 2006 to eliminate substandard housing in the area, with a goal to build or renovate 500 homes. UC students were the first group to volunteer to build the first new home as part of that challenge, after the UC Board of Trustees sponsored the effort as part of the Chattahoochee Project Initiative blitz during UC’s 2007 spring break. Eleven students volunteered on that trip.
Habitat advisor Dan Dallmer, an alumnus of the UC College of Business, adds that UC student volunteers completed two more homes in December 2007. Since the Board of Trustees’ sponsorship of the first house in the Chattachoochee challenge, a total of 24 new homes have been built and 15 have been renovated in Lanett. In the latest round of answering Fuller’s challenge, 250 volunteers from around the nation last month worked on building six new homes and rehabilitating several others. The six UC volunteers will complete construction such as interior painting, finish carpentry and landscaping.
| Mike Benkert |
Mike Benkert of Anderson, a UC student earning his master’s degree from the top-ranked architecture program in the College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning (DAAP), began volunteer service with the UC/Cincinnati Habitat for Humanity partnership when he was a college freshman at UC. As one of the volunteers planning the trip to Lanett, he says the volunteer effort is “fitting to start off my last year at UC like I did starting out my first year at UC.”
Benkert helped introduce basic, sustainable, affordable design strategies into the UC-sponsored home built in Avondale last year by UC volunteers. The home was the first built by UC volunteers to accommodate a family with disabilities. “I was able to take on a little more of a leadership role in some of the tasks last year,” Benkert says. “The UC partnership with Cincinnati Habitat For Humanity has been a good learning experience for me, career-wise,” says Benkert.
On Sept. 15, the student volunteers will travel to Americus, Ga., to tour the Habitat Global Village. During that trip, Dallmer says the students will explore current living conditions around the world as well as learn about the types of homes that Habitat For Humanity is building around the world to eliminate substandard housing.
Dallmer says that in addition to the UC service in Lanett, two UC student teams have traveled to El Salvador for Habitat builds, with a third trip planned for December, and five students representing the UC College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning (DAAP), spent three months volunteering for builds along the Gulf Coast. In addition, three teams of UC volunteers have traveled to Louisiana to rebuild homes damaged and destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.
UC’s Center for Community Engagement works to enhance the UC student experience by connecting the university with the community through service. UC’s Center for Community Engagement reports that every year, thousands of UC students perform valuable service to the local, national and international community.
