[shanice]

I appreciate everyone's comments and am very much aware now that the mission and motives behind our trip are very much misunderstood and misinterpreted.

First of all, I believe there are some misconceptions on how Habitat for Humanity works, its partnership with Global Villages, and its general goals as a non-profit organization.

Habitat for Humanity and Habitat for Humanity International is solely fueled by donations from supporting entities. The organization does not merely have $30,000 dollars or 1 million baht to give a needy family as someone proposed. All of the money generated towards constructing a new home and offering affordable loans for the buyer comes directly from outside donations.

So who organizes events, creates awareness, and solicits support from the community for such a trip? Volunteers do. Habitat's money does not simply raise itself. Volunteers are the engines behind this revenue. We are the faces of Habitat's purpose and in participating in local and international builds we raise awareness for such global issues such as poverty and sub-standard housing. Without our volunteer labor or enthusiasm for what we do the entire driving force behind Habitat's income and mission would fall apart. Volunteers get their hands dirty, their faces sweaty, and their backs sore-- all for the love of the service. They share their experiences working locally or overseas with their friends, their communities, and anyone else who wants to learn, and in turn, their efforts are recognized by more and more people. The effect: Habitat receives more support, employs more volunteers, builds more homes, and changes more lives.


I find it somewhat disheartening our cause as become so misconstrued in this thread. We are not simply mindless students sauntering around our college campus waiting for other's to pay our way across the globe so we can have a relaxing holiday. We work around the clock in many more ways than asking for donations in trying to raise our funds. Each team member devotes 10-12 hours every week organizing individual events, promotions, and part-time jobs to collect money for the overall fund. We throw bake sales, date auctions, charity concerts, eating contests, bar nights, spaghetti dinners, airport rides, sports tourneys, comedy shows, lecture series, etc. The list goes on and on. Not to mention, a lot of our money is directly raised from simple manual labor, we spend almost every weekend raking leaves, painting homes, chopping wood, collecting trash, etc. We are sacrificing a huge portion of our free time, academic curriculum and "typical college saga" of crazy antics to participate in this trip and provide for these people.

MichaelJRocks: I urge you to invest a little bit of your time to volunteering at a Habitat build. Many of your critiques can be justified by witnessing the enthusiasm, spirit and collaboration of dedicated volunteers. We don't claim to be veteran construction workers or seasoned carpenters, but that's precisely the beauty of Habitat's mission: we are proud to be students, with an eclectic mix of academic concentrations and physical attributes, most of which do not include home construction. Our desire to make this difference vastly outweighs our inadequacies with a hammer or cordless drill. Check out Habitat for Humanity's website and learn how the other 300,000 homes were constructed.

Why not do a local build within US's own borders or even NC?

We do. All the time. The UNC-Chapel Hill Habitat for Humanity chapter supplies two large groups of students every weekend to local builds in Orange County. We are one of the most acclaimed and productive student Habitat chapters in the nation. We also invest a lot of our time into community outreach and tutoring. In fact, we have such a dedicated population of enthusiastic volunteers we also sponsor two, annual international trips to raise awareness for global poverty and sub-standard housing.