Ashton Kim

I first joined the cause of Habitat for Humanity because I believed that there was nothing more important than providing people with the basic elements of life; food, clothing, and shelter. Habitat represented the third, and I have dedicated myself to its cause for the last two years.

I had attended trips to communities where I built houses from scratch. The last places I visited were remote areas of Brazil where our groups completed brick houses for people who could not afford such shelter. After mixing concrete, carrying tons of cement and bricks, shoveling rubble and sand, digging into solid ground, and setting foundations and stack up walls, our building team learnt the value of manual labor and the impact it had on less fortunate people who needed places to stay. The people we helped had the worst working conditions in the middle of the barren plains of Northeastern Brazil, and we were glad to give them a proper place to live. We were working as part of a team, where professionals supervised our process and taught us methods for bricking and mixing the concrete with our hands, and we completed multiple foundations, alongside infrastructure for the neighborhood.

Once we arrived in the Lower Ninth Ward, I immediately realized that it was going to be a different kind of assistance that we would be providing. Our group was not going to be part of a build site, but an active force that would help the community sustain itself. Although managing with donations, the community center and the community itself did not have all the resources it needed to go on. The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina had left homeowners unable to return, and stripped from their rights to their houses due to technical and legal issues. Meanwhile, there was only one school left of the seven before the disaster, and the crime rate was highest in the country. Mack, the manager of this place, repeated the importance of the community, how a hub will need to be created for the community to have a voice, and how he wished he could bring more kids and education back here, starting with safe infrastructure around the center and more volunteers and sponsorships to sustain development in the area. His concern was that a place of disaster is easily forgotten, even if it hasn’t been taken care of. After six years, that was what happened here.

We started with simple work, and I must admit that some of us were disappointed with the lack of organization here. Even I was used to and expected there to be organized shifts and tasks. All there was were piles of junk to sort out and a center to clean out and reconstruct. Still, our group managed to organize the scrap from what we could use, clear out entire areas of the center and refurnish them. Putting up walls and painting them, rearranging the library, etc. As our leaders mentioned, we had to be proactive, rather than reactive, and initiate everything we could think of to make this place more sustainable and then leave it to following groups to continue the job. We cleared out a new library, painted walls, added more aesthetic elements to the center, and got through sorting a lot of trash.

Truth be told, it wasn’t work that I was used to doing or even expected at this trip, but it gave new meaning to the work I am doing for Habitat. I was used to raising individual houses, this place, once brought back on its feet, could provide a starting point for the entire village. Our work here could be the beginning of something far greater, which could build momentum with more volunteers and help. Even now four other schools were staying here and working alongside us. I hope students could spread the word back in their own communities, and also use their own expertise that they learn from each school to help rebuild this place. Mack said that his driving force was we who were volunteering, and we should be for more people.

For more information about the Lower Ninth Ward Village please visit their website here and if you would like to make a donation, you can do that here.