Global Engagement
Our commitment to our mission goes beyond the borders of Southeastern Metropolitan Atlanta. Every year Southern Crescent Habitat for Humanity donates ten percent of all privately raised undesignated funds to support Habitat’s mission worldwide with a goal of eliminating poverty housing and homelessness.
Global Village Trips
In addition to financial support, we also have sent participants to volunteer on Global Village Trips to Haiti (2012) and Vietnam (2013). If you would like to learn more about how you could participate in one of our upcoming Global Village Trips, please email us at globalvillage@schabitat.org. We invite you to read below and learn more about past trips.
Melissa Chapman, Vietnam
In late August, Terry Chapman (a SCHFH Core Volunteer) and I traveled to the city of My Tho to help build homes and hope for four families in the Tien Giang Province. In partnership with Habitat for Humanity Vietnam, a total of 40 volunteers from across the U.S., Australia and New Zealand, came together to support this effort to serve families who were living in insecure temporary housing, thatched roof sheds or were staying with relatives in over-crowded homes. This build was part of a larger effort Habitat Vietnam has been developing with local partners to assist a total of 150 low income households across South Vietnam, an investment that will span the next five years. Our trip was particularly special in that over half of our volunteer group was comprised of Vietnam veterans returning to the country after 45 years. Much had changed and this was an opportunity for them to come back, under very different circumstances, to positively impact the lives of those they fought against so long ago.
To witness the remarkable improvements for the families we served was humbling and uplifting.
But for the veterans who came to serve, the trip held a somewhat cathartic and higher purpose.
Bill Lacy, Haiti
In November 2011,Dave Hesterlee, David Rayburn (both SCHFH Core Volunteers) and I boarded two Delta Airlines jets with about 500 volunteers bound for Haiti. This Global Village response was hosted by Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter and was to build 100 homes for families in Leoganne, the epicenter of a 7.0 earthquake. We arrived in Port Au Prince and found Haiti to be a very hot and dry climate even in the first week of November. It had been nearly two years since the earthquake and subsequent landslides wreaked havoc to the area. Nevertheless thousands of people in the area were still living in makeshift shelters made of ragged blue tarps and other scavenged materials that were left after the emergency relief effort. Volunteers were not prepared for the abject poverty of such a large mass of people.
The highlight for us was the happiness in the faces of the homeowners as they paraded through the Santo Community singing in praise and thanks for their new homes.
We were also not prepared for the positive impact this experience would have on our lives and on the lives of new homeowners in the Santo community. We built 100 homes that week but we also built friendships, camaraderie, and faith in the compassion of humankind and of our God. Work continued in the Santo community in 2012 and will continue throughout Haiti for many years to come but the seeds that were planted there will benefit many future generations to come.
Here is what the people sounded like, singing in the Santo Community:
