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We Salute Volunteers - National Volunteer Week 2005
World Youth Day Blitz, Toronto, Canada. Photo courtesy of M. Mordecai, Habitat for Humanity Canada.
One in four Canadians volunteer. Habitat for Humanity depends on the generosity of the 30,000 volunteers who make up the backbone of our Canadian organization. During the week of April 17-23, 2005 , we join with other organizations in saluting our volunteers during National Volunteer Week.
Some volunteer stats compiled by Volunteer Canada:
- Over one-third (34%) of all volunteer hours were contributed by the 5% of volunteers (who gave 596 hours or more of their time).
- Women are more likely than men to volunteer; however, men contribute more total volunteer hours per year.
- Volunteer participation is highest for those aged 35 to 54 (30 percent) closely followed by those aged 15 to 24 (29 percent).
- In 2000 the average annual number of hours contributed per volunteer increased to 162 hours from 149 hours in 1997.
- In 2000 volunteers contributed approximately 1 billion hours of their time.
- These volunteer hours translate into the equivalent of 549 000 full-time year-round jobs (assuming 40 hours of work per week for 48 weeks).
We truly could not do it without you! Thank you for sharing your valuable time, helping us build homes and hope.
If YOU would like to volunteer in some capacity with Habitat for Humanity, please contact Habitat for Humanity Canada or the Habitat affiliate in your area. See our web site for locations.
Jimmy Carter:
Habitat's Most Famous Volunteer
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Former President Jimmy Carter on a build. Photos (from left) courtesy of Steffan Hacker, Gregg Pachkowski, Habitat for Humanity International. |
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Jimmy Carter is Habitat for Humanity’s most famous volunteer. As president of the United States , Jimmy Carter was deeply committed to social justice and basic human rights. He and his wife Rosalynn left the White House in search of meaningful ways to contribute in these areas. In addition to promoting peace and human rights through the non-profit Carter Center in Atlanta , they lead the Jimmy Carter Work Project (JCWP) for Habitat for Humanity International one week each year.
Jimmy Carter's involvement with Habitat for Humanity International began in 1984 when the former president led a work group to New York City to help renovate a six-story building with 19 families in need of decent, affordable shelter. That experience planted the seed, and the Jimmy Carter Work Project has been an internationally recognized event of HFHI ever since.
Each year, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter give a week of their time—along with their construction skills—to build homes and raise awareness of the critical need for affordable housing. The JCWP is held at a different location each year – from Waterloo , Ontario to Durban , South Africa -- and attracts volunteers from around the world. The 2005 Jimmy Carter Work Project will take place in Detroit and Benton Harbor , Michigan as well as in Windsor, Ontario.
MEDIA RELEASE
February 28, 2004
( WATERLOO , ON) Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn will join with Habitat for Humanity during the week of June 19-24, 2005 to build 225 houses in several communities in Canada and the United States , including Windsor , Ontario
The 22 nd annual Jimmy Carter Work Project will be hosted by affiliates in the cities of Benton Harbor and Detroit, Michigan, and will build simple, decent, affordable houses in partnership with people in need. These affiliates will be joined by more than 50 Habitat for Humanity affiliates throughout Michigan and in the City of Windsor, Ontario, building in their local communities.
Habitat for Humanity Canada will partner with Habitat for Humanity Windsor-Essex in building six Habitat homes during this special week. Key sponsors in this project, who could be named at press time, include Whirlpool Corporation and Weyerhaeuser.
“Habitat for Humanity shares a vision with our sponsors and volunteers that building homes builds hope,” stated Habitat for Humanity Canada President and CEO David Hughes. “For more than twenty years, President Carter has continually demonstrated committed leadership in making this vision a reality.”
During President Carter’s June 23 visit to the Habitat worksite in Windsor , Ontario , Habitat for Humanity Canada will launch an exciting venture called Leaders Building A Nation, with a call to Canadian leaders in various spheres of life to follow Carter’s example in helping our neighbours.
President Carter states, “Combined with our work at The Carter Center, where we focus on peace-building and health-building, Rosalynn and I have found great joy in serving those who have too few advocates, too few friends, in this world. As long as we are able, we will keep on building, hammering out love and hope and houses, doing what we can to help Habitat for Humanity build a better and more caring world.”
President Carter’s longstanding relationship with Habitat for Humanity began in 1984 when he spent a day donating his carpentry skills and manual labour at a work site in Americus , GA , home of Habitat for Humanity’s international headquarters. The Jimmy Carter Work Project is now Habitat’s largest annual event. The Carters have personally been involved with the construction of more than 10,000 Habitat for Humanity houses worldwide.
Sponsorship and volunteer opportunities for the 2005 Jimmy Carter Work Project are filling up quickly. For more information, please contact Terry Petkau, Habitat for Humanity’s Director of Special Projects at tpetkau@habitat.ca.
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Volunteer Extraordinaire |
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Wally Hooper always kept a diary - when he owned his own business servicing and renovating mobile homes and afterwards in his "retirement." It's a good thing too, because no one would ever believe what he had done in his golden years without the diary to back it up. |
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When Wally was anticipating retiring from the business he had run for more than twenty years, his wife told him he had better find something to do to keep himself occupied. On vacation in California , Wally turned on the television and heard former US President Jimmy Carter talking about his volunteer work with Habitat for Humanity. Wally immediately turned to his wife and said, “That’s what I’m going to do.”
Apparently he meant it. Two cities, fourteen years, 109 Habitat houses later, Wally has logged an unbelievable 18,548 volunteer hours in his diary.
18,548 hours translates to 1325 hours a year or 25 hours a week, 52 weeks a year. Most weeks he actually volunteered more than 25 hours, spending one week a month in Kelowna , BC with “Grandpa’s Girl”, his now-10 year old granddaughter.
Wally and his wife lived in Winnipeg for many years and he began his Habitat involvement there in 1991. In April 1993, he joined various Habitat volunteers in a visit to a 20-house blitz build in Americus , Georgia to see how it was done. A highlight was a side-trip to Maranatha Baptist Church in Plaines , Georgia where Jimmy Carter teaches a weekly adult Sunday School class. After the service, Wally and the others were honoured to have their photographs taken with Carter.
A few months later, Wally was appointed as the crew leader for the Carter House in the 1993 Jimmy Carter Work Project in Winnipeg . Daily he worked with Carter and his wife and other dignitaries. Laughingly he recalls that Carter had the oldest tools on the worksite, carried around in a little wooden toolbox that might have belonged to his father. Wally had a brand new jigsaw which Carter was the first to ever use.
“It really felt good to work with Jimmy Carter,”Wally recalled.
Two years later, Wally and his wife prepared for a move to Calgary , Alberta . Two days before the moving truck packed up the furniture, Wally finished a 5-house blitz build in Winnipeg . True to form, as soon as the furniture was settled in Calgary , Wally wandered out to the local Habitat site and joined in to finish off the building of two houses.
Last fall Wally, who is now a 74 year old widower who suffers from diabetes, tore a retina in his eye. Surgery offered some relief, but when the eye was re-injured, Wally became blind in one eye. To his great regret, his doctor told him it was time to hang up his tool belt. Though Wally recognizes the sense of this, he also is loathe to give up his visits to the work sites. The Habitat affiliate in Calgary has told Wally they will set up a comfortable chair for him on the work sites, so that he can visit with his friends and offer them advice learned through 18,548 hours of apprenticeship.
“I think Habitat for Humanity is a wonderful operation. There are many young retirees these days who, like me, don’t golf or curl. I would tell them to get involved with Habitat. You will personally get so much out of it. Habitat for Humanity has been my whole life.”
Habitat for Humanity Toronto
Executive Director Honoured Neil Hetherington, Chief Executive Officer of Habitat for Humanity Toronto was honoured with a Distinguished Alumni Award from Seneca College . At age 31, he is believed to be the youngest CEO of a Habitat affiliate in the world.
Under his leadership since 2000, the Toronto affiliate has accelerated its building program from less than one housing start per year to a record-setting 51 homes under construction in 2004. Revenues from Habitat’s two Toronto ReStores, which sell reusable building materials to help fund the program, have grown from $250,000 when Neil started as CEO to more than $1.4 million last year.
After graduation from the University of Western Ontario - Huron College ( London ) and Seneca College ( Toronto ), Building Construction Regulations Administration, 1995, Neil volunteered with Habitat for Humanity, building homes in Hungary , Poland and Uganda , South Korea and Ghana .
A Million Lives Changed By a Home 
Two young lives changed by Habitat for Humanity. Photo: Kim MacDonald, Habitat for Humanity International.
On March 17, 2005 Habitat for Humanity officers and representatives joined the mayors of Knoxville and Knox County , Tennessee to celebrate a mammoth milestone –the groundbreaking for Habitat for Humanity’s 200,000th home.
The home will house Habitat’s millionth person since Habitat for Humanity laid its first foundation nearly 30 years ago.
Completion and dedication of the home, which will be in August, will be followed 24 minutes later by the completion and dedication of another home –in Sri Lanka , a country hard hit by the Dec. 26, 2004 , tsunami in the Indian Ocean basin. (Habitat completes a home somewhere in the world every 24 minutes, and Sri Lanka is 12 hours ahead of local time).
“It took 24 years for Habitat to build its first 100,000 houses,”said Habitat for Humanity CEO Paul Leonard. “But with the generosity of our partners and the thousands of volunteers who have helped shoulder this load, the second 100,000 was completed in just five years.”
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