Even though Habitat for Humanity Bulloch year started off slow, they have now broken ground on the fourth house this year and their 60th house overall.
Habitat for Humanity Bulloch is a non-profit, ecumenical Christian ministry that is dedicated to helping low-income families become stronger, more stable and self-reliant through home ownership.
Kathy Jenkins, executive director, mentioned that even though this year's constructions started off slow, they have managed to finish building their first house, continuing finishing their second and third house, and started construction on their third house.
"We've completed one this year; we were greatly impacted by the pandemic," Jenkins said. "We're starting to get our feet back under us and keep moving forward."
The first house that was completed this year is located at 117 Green Street in Statesboro. After finishing that house, volunteers and construction workers continue to complete a house located at 119 Green Street in Statesboro and then a house in Hope-u-like-it. On December 3 they broke ground on house number 60 at 102 West Inman Street.
Habitat for Humanity Bulloch works extensively for the community
Habitat welcomes people from all walks of life to join us as we build simple, decent, affordable houses in partnership with God and families in need. Though the vast majority have no construction experience or building skills, volunteers are involved in most phases of construction. By working side-by-side with the family who will live in the house, our volunteers experience for themselves the joy created when a family is able to realize their dream of home ownership.
"We always welcome financial donations; it costs us up to $100,000 just to build a house," Jenkins said. "We're funded by donations, and we also use a lot of volunteer labor to keep those cost down."
No experience needed
They strive to consistently update the construction site addresses on their website to allow potential volunteers to come and work. There is no experience required to help volunteer, and Marcinkevich loves to teach anyone how to build a house from the ground-up.
Some volunteers that come help are students from Ogeechee Technical College and Georgia Southern University. "I had two different senior classes at Georgia Southern that used our builds as their senior projects this year," Marcinkevich said. "The Ogeechee Tech construction class comes out every week and helps on our build sites.”
Aaron Marcinkevich, construction manager, expressed his appreciation for volunteers in the community.
"We love our volunteers and we welcome volunteers every Saturday throughout the year," he said.
Marcinkevich states that construction will pause for the holidays, but on the first Saturday in January 2023, any volunteers can show up on the job site between 8am-9am.
A new way of building
For the new construction on West Inman Street, Habitat for Humanity Bulloch construction workers will introduce a new way to use concrete for building houses. This is called poured concrete, which is a new construction technique. The new house will be the first in Statesboro that will be built with this new technique, using insulating concrete forms filled with concrete for the exterior walls.
"In the next semester, I'm hoping to get both of those students in both of those programs trained by the company that is going to provide those forms with us," Marcinkevich states.
If you want to know more about Habitat for Humanity of Bulloch County, visit their website. To learn more about the new construction technique, visit this link.
