HfH rep visits Lodge School
Eastern Times, 22 Oct 2008
(click for larger image)

Building social conscience among the youth
Borneo Post, 22 Oct 2008

 
WHEN DO WE START:Habitat for Humanity Kuching’s VP and Public Relations Officer, James Lo, HfH Family Mentor Foo Ai Fung and volunteers from Holland,Joost Craenmehr and Joyce Verschurenposing with the Lodge School Secondary’s Form 3 students at the conclusion of the seminar.  

KUCHING: Lodge Secondary School’s Form 3 students were treated to an atypical seminar yesterday when Habitat for Humanity delivered a brief introduction on the organization’s founding principles and how it worked to eradicate poverty housing all over Kuching. 

A non-profit organization formed in the United States of America in 1976, Habitat for Humanity’s (HfH) Kuching affiliate is the first branch to open in Malaysia. Since 1998, it has completed 50 houses and works the whole year round building proper housing for the less fortunate.  

While the inspiration for the seminar comes from the Lodge School’s Chairman of the Board, Gabriel Teo, the move to expose their students to being involved with community projects is something that the Lodge School Secondary’s principal, Ling Kwok Huong feels would give the students a more grounded and more evolved perspective.

Even though the seminar was directed towards Form 3 students, “we hope that it can evolve to a whole school activity for the weekend,” Ling said.

There to present the brief seminar was James Lo (HfH Kuching Vice President and Public Relations), accompanied by Foo Ai Fung (HfH Kuching Family Mentoring) and a pair of volunteers from Holland here on holiday, Joyce Verschuren and Joost Craenmehr to assist with the question and answer period after the seminar. 

Dependent on free manual labour from volunteers, fund-raising, donations, sponsorships and monthly instalments from the prospective homeowner themselves, the building of houses can take anywhere between 5 weeks and 4 months to complete. “It depends on the number of volunteers that we get,” Lo said, adding that 15 volunteers would be the optimum amount for one day of house-building.  

When asked whether house-building was fun, Joyce, who has spent the last 2 weeks of her holiday building a HfH house in Kampong Senibong replied that there were alot of things that she didn’t know about house-building before, but now has keen knowledge and a memorable experience to take away with her when she leaves Kuching next week.

“Even if you don’t know anything about house-building, we have a very friendly Construction Supervisor, Eric Yap, on-site to assist you in any and all aspects of the build,” Lo said, stressing that no previous experience is required to volunteer for HfH. 

Lo also pointed out that the HfH is not a non-profit organization, not a charity. Homeowners repay the cost price of their house (without labour charge or interest) in monthly instalments ranging from RM100-RM250 over a period of around 15 years. These instalments then go to HfH’s revolving fund which enables the organization to start building on another applicant’s house. 

 “While we’d love to just build a house and then give it away,” he said, “this type of charity-based system would make it difficult to regenerate income for the next house, thereby preventing Habitat from carrying out its goal of eradicating poverty housing.”

The repayment of the house at cost price of materials, moreover, gives the homeowner a sense of pride and ownership. “By giving those in poverty housing our time and energy to build a proper home, the end result goes a long way in giving these homeowners a head-start in life that they were lacking before.”

For more enquiries on Habitat for Humanity, please contact their office at 082-242700.

Hey hello, we’re Joyce and Joost from the Netherlands and we’ve been travelling through South East Asia for 9 months before we came to Kuching. After 9 months of travelling we really wanted to do something useful and stay in one place a little longer.

On the internet we found out about Habitat for Humanity Kuching. We really liked the concept of their projects. What we most liked about it was that you don’t need any experience, and you can work for as long or as short a period as you wish. 

We’ve helped for about 2 weeks on the building site. We’ve worked on 3 different houses in the same village just outside Kuching. In those 2 weeks we’ve helped make the foundation, plaster walls, hammer the inside walls, paint and install windows.

It’s really fun to help the families out and to do something for the community. We learned a lot about other cultures and habits by working with members of the homepartner family and their neighbours. It’s also a great experience to work with other volunteers from Kuching and all over the world (Habitat’s Global Village teams).

Besides that, you do learn a lot about building houses. Even though you’ve no building experience you can make yourself very useful and get a lot of work done. Especially because Eric Yap, the supervisor on the building site, is a very good guide and a really nice guy too.

In the beginning we didn’t know what to expect, but once we’d started, everything just went along smoothly. It’s not hard at all and it’s very much fun to do. After about 2 days we had some blisters and aching muscles but you can make it as hard for yourself as you like. The time flies when you’re on the building site and, before you know it, the day is over.

We really recommend you to help out a couple of days on one of the building sites of Habitat for Humanity. For us it has been very satisfying!

- Joyce & Joost

This is a special shout out to Georgette Tan. Apart from helping revamp this site, Georgette came up with an amazing idea on her own initiative — for her birthday, she asked her friends, instead of giving her presents, to volunteer to build with Habitat or give a donation. 

The successful birthday build iswritten upon her own site — scoot on over towww.georgettetan.comfor someabsolutely fabulous reading dahlings—andshe collected RM500 from her friends to boot! 

Kudos also toFaith, who borrowed the same idea and raised RM515.83. (Any of you readers out there interested in taking a leaf from Georgette’s book, drop her a line through her blog!)

Faith and ‘Gette, it’s friends like you who help keep Habitat going. You have reaffirmed my faith (no pun intended) in human kindness.

In this tough world,a little compassion goes a long way.

Take a bow, ladies.