From building houses to fundraisers, these students are seeking to help get families across Wake County the leg up they need.
Habitat for Humanity at NCSU is a chapter of the worldwide charity of the same name. By working closely with the Wake County chapter of Habitat, members strive to build affordable housing for families across Raleigh.
“What we do as a chapter is to help bring volunteers out to the build sites,” said Neil Cornwell, a third-year studying biomedical engineering and the group’s current president. “We promote their mission on campus, and we also fundraise throughout the year.”
With most of the chapter’s activities focus around builds on Saturdays and events on campus, student participation plays a big role in what the group does.
“We work on an event-to-event basis,” said Tyler Bendl, a third-year studying biomedical engineering and the group’s current vice president. “We know people’s schedules can get hectic throughout the year, and so, with our volunteers, sometimes it fluctuates at the beginning of the year. We have a lot of students, not a lot of tests going on, and then it kind of filters out, but we love volunteers, and as much or as little as you can volunteer is really helpful to us.”
One of the group’s most notable recurring events is Shack-a-Thon, held every September in the Brickyard.
“Shack-a-Thon is our biggest event and takes a lot of preparation,” said Katarina Smith, a second-year studying business administration and the group’s current secretary. “At the moment, we also have a T-shirt contest for the design of next year’s Shack-a-Thon T-shirt; there’s flyers for it all over campus.”
This semester, the group is planning an all-new, large-scale event, to be held right here at NC State.
“Anytime Habitat Wake goes to build a house on-site, they prefabricate all the walls, so we don’t just show up and build every part of the house on the build site,” Cornwell said. “What we’ve talked to Habitat Wake about is, well, let’s fabricate all the walls on the Brickyard for three houses, and then those walls will be taken to the worksite, and those volunteers will put those walls together to make a house for a family.”
This new event, called the Brickyard Blitz, will be held on April 6.
“We’re reaching out to student groups on campus, at the athletics department and big name officials at the university,” Cornwell said. “We hope that we’ll have students from different organizations and groups, NC State officials, all working together on the Brickyard over the course of a day to build three homes on the Brickyard.”
Habitat for Humanity at NC State is always looking for new volunteers and have reached out to the student body in a variety of ways all across campus.
“We’re always looking to recruit new people,” Bendl said. “We have emails sent out every week, but really, at the beginning of the year, that’s when we really try to recruit new freshmen and students, we’re at student involvement events, we’re at Packapalooza trying to reach out, the CSLEPS service and leadership fair, just stuff like that.”
Going forward, the chapter is looking to get more students on campus involved in its events and hopes to be able to help more families across the Raleigh area.
“Our chapter here at NC State is supporting Wake County, and so I’d personally like to see the support for Wake County grow,” Smith said. “Also, I’d like to see more people come out on Saturdays. At the moment, we have one house that we’re working on. If we potentially had several, if we had the funds to do that, we could have more volunteers and get more people involved.”
For more information about their events, Habitat for Humanity at NCSU can be contacted at ncsuhabitat@gmail.com.
