Rutgers Habitat for Humanity Builds One Family’s Home, Sets Sights on Another
After raising $100,000 for a home in Plainfield, Rutgers students seek $50,000 for a barrier-free home so a 2-year-old boy can finally live with his family
'The [Rutgers] chapter always finds a place for people who want to do a little bit more, and it draws amazing people.'– Dan Shamlian, Rutgers University Habitat for Humanity
When Shemeckka Jones and her 17-year-old son and 15-year-old daughter move from their apartment into their new three-bedroom duplex in Plainfield, they will enjoy the results of their own labor and the effort of Habitat for Humanity volunteers who worked alongside them to build their home.
Many of the volunteers, like Vishnu Venkatesh, arrived on weekends from the Rutgers University Habitat for Humanity chapter to work with Jones, a school social worker, getting to know her and her teenage children. When you’re working all day hammering, plastering or painting, there’s lots of time to talk and share stories. “The students were great, so energetic and excited to help out and give back,” Jones says. “We got along great.”
The Rutgers chapter provided more than time and muscle. In 2012, the year Venkatesh joined the chapter looking for a small community of likeminded students within the larger Rutgers community, the student group made a remarkable commitment: to raise $100,000 to fund construction of one of five homes in Habitat’s West Seventh Street Village in Plainfield.
“It is so impressive,” says Allie Whitefleet, development and communications manager of Habitat for Humanity of Greater Plainfield & Middlesex County. “We don’t have any other groups raising at that level.”
Even more impressive: After the students reached the $100,000 mark in January, they set sights on a new goal – raising $50,000 for a half-sponsorship of Greater Plainfield & Middlesex County’s first barrier-free home. Westfield-based New Jersey Connect is providing $50,000 for the other half to build a home for Nikeisa Johnson and her family, including her 2-year-old son who requires 24-hour medical attention and has never been able to live at home with his family because of accessibility needs. Donations to the Rutgers chapter are being matched dollar for dollar by a State Farm grant up to $10,000 through April 30.
Three years ago, Rutgers chapter leaders returned from a Habitat for Humanity international conference for student leaders in Indianapolis, fired up to set a big goal to inspire the members and attract more volunteers.
Samuel Kovach-Orr, then-president of the chapter (which had heavy turnover at the time) and now a student at Rutgers Law School in Camden, saw that other student groups were going above the norm, raising money to sponsor entire home builds. “We thought that would be a really good way to make a splash, make our group known on campus and have a goal to create cohesiveness in the chapter,” he said.
They quickly found out that sponsoring a home in New Jersey required a lot more money than it does throughout the country, but they did it anyway.
And they made a splash. More students joined to help fulfill the stepped-up fundraising commitment. Venkatesh says there are between 80 and 100 active members, a big change from the meetings pulling in around 20 that Kovach-Orr remembers.
The students got to work planning fundraisers, reaching out to corporate donors and “canning” throughout New Brunswick. They set up concession tables at basketball games and wrestling matches, and ornament-making and birdhouse-building stations at the Woodbridge Mall, which doubled as downtime for parents shopping with kids and a way to raise funds and educate community members about Habitat.
Habitat for Humanity, begun in 1976 as a ministry to repair and build housing for people in need, has helped 6.8 million people improve their living conditions. Today, there are more than 1,400 local U.S. affiliates and more than 70 national organizations around the world. Families that qualify for Habitat housing must provide a total of 200 to 400 hours of “sweat equity” from household members age 18 and older and buy the house at cost through a 30-year no-interest mortgage.
Rutgers chapter member Punit Arora, now a New Jersey Medical School student, organized what has become the chapter’s most successful fundraiser – the Build-A-Thon. Once a year, students form teams and crowd-raise money as they build shacks on the Busch Engineering Lawn and sleep overnight inside their makeshift structures (the more innovative, the better).
“It’s cool because you take for granted having shelter,” says Venkatesh, a junior in the School of Arts and Sciences majoring in cell biology and neuroscience and a member of the chapter’s executive board. “But when you’re outside on a cold October night in a cardboard shack, you realize what it’s like not to have good shelter.”
Kathleen McGlynn, a senior School of Arts and Sciences psychology major, loves that Rutgers Habitat “has something for everyone.” If you want to be hands on and help build or work behind the scenes to fundraise, there are many ways to be involved. A bonus, she says, is the members who stay involved are a passionate bunch. “The people who have stuck with it are people I enjoy having in my life,” McGlynn says.
“The chapter always finds a place for people who want to do a little bit more, and it draws amazing people,” says Dan Shamlian, a School of Arts and Sciences English major and three-year group member who is working on a video project to share the stories of the families who achieve home ownership through Habitat. “It’s home.”
For media inquiries, contact Dory Devlin at dory.devlin@rutgers.edu or 973-972-7276.