Video: Students Spend Spring Break Building Homes for Habitat

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STARKVILLE, Miss. (WCBI) — College students from across the country are putting on their hard hats – helping to build homes in Starkville.

It’s part of Habitat for Humanity’s Collegiate Challenge program.

Students from four colleges will help out over their spring break these next few weeks, trading in time at the beach to give back to others.

For Timothy Wienand, working with Starkville Habitat for Humanity is a spring break tradition.

“The whole experience was a whole learning curve for me my first year, and then I just loved it, and kept coming back,” Wienand said.

Timothy and about 30 classmates traveled all the way from Illinois’ Rockford University to help build two homes.

It hasn’t even been a week, and they’re already ahead of schedule.

“We just had a bare slab on Monday morning, and now we’ve got the trusses up, and we’ll be putting decking on this afternoon, and I’m really pleased with the progress,” said Habitat’s construction manager, John Breazeale.

With saw in hand and a lot of sweat, volunteers say it’s very rewarding to see what they can build in just a few days – even a year later.

“We worked on a house over there last year, and it got finished last summer, and she allowed us to come and visit her home and see it actually completely built, so it was nice to see how it was completed and saw where it started, and where it’s at now,” Wienand said.

And it’s that feeling that brings them back year after year – even after they graduate.

“Having never had any experience in home construction, it feels good to look at something and say, ‘Hey, I did that,'” said volunteer Dave Kubacki. “It makes me feel really proud.”

It also helps when they get to work in warm weather.

“It’s nice to get away from cold, snow in Rockford,” Kubacki said.

Volunteers say they’re already looking forward to coming back next year.

The student volunteers will head back to Illinois late Friday night.

Habitat says they’ll move two families into the homes by the summer.

Categories: Local News

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