Education
To contact us about our education program, please email HFHeducation@dartmouth.edu.
Building Future Builders:
Habitat Outreach and Education
Taking Habitat for Humanity’s international mission of "building simple, decent homes for low-income people" as a mandate for action, Dartmouth Habitat has spent the past year fundraising, planning, and constructing its first independently-built home. Recognizing a need to build more than houses, however, two Habitat students have taken this mission one step—and one generation—further. Habitat members Emily Meier '05 and Rebecca Jennings ‘03 have piloted an education program to teach Upper Valley elementary and middle school students about housing issues in their community. Their school-based education program aims to raise awareness among local children about issues of poverty and homelessness and to instill in them a lifelong commitment to community service.
Emily and Rebecca present an interactive lesson on poverty and homelessness in classrooms throughout the Upper Valley. Their one-hour visits consist of a dialogue on the issues and an age-appropriate hands-on activity on poverty. In elementary school classrooms, they use a felt board with a picture of a house. Emily and Rebecca ask the students to fill the house with felt household items, which are color coded according to needs and luxuries. By visually representing this distinction, "We make children realize that some people don't have the option of buy all the necessities and brainstorm why people don't," Emily explains.
For middle school visits, the volunteers ask the students to calculate the cost of living for area families. Students then computed how much individuals need to earn if they are working full time and how many hours they must work at minimum wage to support their families. The exercise not only reinforces what the students were learning in class through practical application of math skills, Rebecca notes, "It hopefully puts the issue in perspective more than a statistic would."
Although children in some of the schools come from predominantly affluent families and have little exposure to poverty, the perspective gained for many children is a realization that their families’ situations are not unique. "Since so many kids are affected by these issues, they feel less alienated because they learn it's widespread," Emily explains. "In talking to kids, they will have very poignant anecdotes about difficulties with poverty. It’s not just homelessness, you can still have a house and be struggling with poverty. " In one classroom, students shared their own experiences with poverty. "One girl raised her hand and told us her grandmother was living with her because she couldn't live in her house. One kid was about to be evicted. Another was helping his dad build an addition on their because he would have to go back to foster care otherwise," Emily recalls.
Knowing that many o f the children are personally affected by poverty, Emily and Rebecca discuss different options for getting support in the Upper Valley, including Habitat for Humanity. Drawing on their own involvement with Habitat, they describe the Dartmouth House and the role students have played in initiating the project.
Both age groups participate in an activity to think about ways they can become involved in their communities. This fall, younger students have colored fabric squares for a quilt for the family that will occupy the Dartmouth Habitat House. Older students are challenged to think about civic participation by making posters to raise awareness about poverty and homelessness.
Emily and Rebecca both see the Habitat education program as closely related to their own understanding of poverty through community service. Emily has been involved in Habitat from her first term at Dartmouth and went on an Alternative Spring Break trip to Conway, South Carolina her freshman year. "I knew that Habitat was what I wanted to invest time in, in part because of my interest in architecture but also because of my desire to do community service. I’m happy that that I did the educational program because I have been able to learn how to do a program, how to effect change," she comments.
Rebecca is the Chief of Public Health for the 2002 Cross Cultural Education and Service Program to Nicaragua. She is also a Big Sister and has volunteered at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center in the past. Her involvement with the education program grew out of a desire to establish a long-term service program for her sorority, Epsilon Kappa Theta, where she is the current Philanthropy Chair.
"I've learned to look at the world around me and not be in the Dartmouth bubble," Rebecca reflects. "It's not that Dartmouth is very isolated," Emily adds, "It's just that Dartmouth students are extremely unaware of poverty in general. It's good to be faced with it and bring those experiences back to campus." It’s likely that they will continue to educate both the campus and the community about poverty in the Upper Valley, for as Emily says, "Once you start [community service], you get so hooked on it because you get so much satisfaction because you're getting more than you're getting. I'm always satisfied by community service and like having it as part of my life."