Habitat for Humanity

Habitat for Humanity of Westchester Reaches Out to Retirees.

As you know, RPC has supported Habitat for Humanity for many years through trips to building sites sponsored by IMPACT and local volunteering led by Don Dennis. Habitat is now hoping to recruit more retirees who can use the skills and knowledge acquired through a lifetime of work to further Habitat’s mission of ridding Westches-ter of sub-standard housing. First and foremost you can help with the construction of our houses but, if that is not within your skills or interest, there are many other ways in which you can make a valuable contribution to this important work, such as:

• Acting as a mentor to one or more of our home-buyer families

• Maintaining open communications with volunteers

• Recruiting new volunteers

• Acquiring land for new houses

• Allaying neighborhood concerns

• Acquiring materials for construction

• Acquiring recyclable building materials for resale through our ReStores.

• Fund raising

The core effort at Habitat is the construction of affordable housing, which is done mostly by volunteer labor, including the families who will live in the homes. Our effort to recruit more volunteers from within the retiree community is being labeled HOPES – Habitat OPportunities for Experienced Seniors. This year we have been funded to dedicate one of our several new home sites in Westchester as a HOPES house. We would like this house to be built mostly, indeed entirely, by retiree volunteers. Here is an opportunity for retirees who can contribute an hour or two, or a day or several days a week to show our many young volunteers how quickly and effectively our retirees can still work together to finish our house in record time and get one more deserving family into a decent home.

And again, if working on a house is not your thing, please look at the list of other opportunities to consider where your life skills can be best applied to support our Habitat families. We really need your help. Thank you for your consideration.

For more information on HOPES , call RPC member Ron Walker at 203-531-4803 or Jim Killoran at 914-636-8335, extension 101.