Aug 13 2010
Six months following the earthquake that destroyed Haiti's capital city, The Fuller Center for Housing is raising permanent shelter to give some of the 1.6 million displaced Haitians a place to call home. The Fuller Center is asking for volunteer teams to travel to Haiti and help build homes.
"We're ready to build houses down here," Billy Ponko, Director of Operations in Haiti for the Fuller Center, said. "We're looking for teams to head down and share the experience. The need is great."
The work can begin right away. One team from Indianapolis already returned from Saintard, a Fuller Center build site located northwest of Port-au-Prince. A second team from Alfred Street Baptist Church in Alexandria, Va. has recently returned from Leogane -- the epicenter of the quake. Local laborers are already at work on both sites.
"We're using a combination of local labor, and volunteers from the States and local church groups," Ponko said. In this way, the Fuller Center hopes to support the local economy while providing volunteer opportunities for the hundreds who have shown interest.
After months of planning, things are coming together.
"It's taken a while to get all of the pieces in place for our work there -- land titles, customs, family selection," Fuller Center president David Snell said. "But we are now building and we're among the first organizations to be providing permanent shelter."
The Fuller Center is partnering with Sundouloi Ministries, Inc. in Saintard. SMI owns land where they operate a school, a church, an orphanage, as well as facilities for hosting large volunteer groups. In addition, SMI owns land that The Fuller Center will build up to 120 homes on. Four are under construction now.
The second site, Leogane, located southwest of Port-au-Prince, is currently prepared for the construction of 10 homes. Volunteers will stay in Notre Dame's volunteer housing. The Fuller Center's local partner, Hope Filled Hands, will help with family selection and volunteer coordination and will provide the land where houses will be built.
Other partners include the Lott Carey Baptist Foreign Mission Convention and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.
"It's an incredible opportunity down here," Ponko said. "The experience you can have here is life-changing."
Source: http://www.FullerCenter.org/