About the Habitat Map App

In celebration of Habitat′s 500,000th and 500,001st milestone and World Habitat Day, we’ve created the Habitat Map App to encourages volunteers to tell us where they’ve built with Habitat for Humanity. Our goal is to create a dynamic representation of 35 years of Habitat volunteer experiences around the globe. Add your previous experience and tell us--what was it that made your Habitat experience memorable? Then help us spread the word by sharing with your friends and family.

Chahe Village, Ning'er County, China September 2011

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Chahe Village, Ning'er County, China (September 2011)

Created by David H.

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About my experience My wife and I brought 19 high school students to the Chahe Village, Pu'er City, Ning'er County in southern Yunnan province. The rainy season had lasted longer than expected so the build was behind schedule. What this meant was that the students spent 4 1/2 days moving bricks from a disorganized pile on the side of a road to an well-ordered stack on the build site. We took the students to a village school for half a day just to give them a break. So, why was this memorable? This trip was absolutely memorable because the nightly student reflections told a story of young adults turning their focus away from themselves to the people around them. Even though they manually moved over 60,000 bricks under a blazingly hot sun, they talked and sang throughout in good spirits. The fact that they could work along side the owner of the soon to be constructed house, eat meals prepared by the villagers in their homes resonated for them. They were able to put aside their grumbling and feel real satisfaction in the knowledge that they were making a difference. They reflected on past service projects that involved fund raising or sorting food goods or clothes and compared it to the actual sacrifice of hard labor on behalf of another. It truly was a life changing experience for these young people and the shared tears at the end of the experience (villagers and students) told the whole story.

Why I volunteer Habitat is well organized and meets our objectives for student service-learning. We have other service trips for students that involve working with orphans, teaching English, installing gravity fed water systems in villages and Habitat gives us one more excellent option.

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David H.
Shanghai, China

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