After a brief hiatus of Habitat for Humanity on campus, an initiative to reactivate Wesleyan’s group has resulted in student involvement with the Middlesex chapter. Students from the newly re-formed group have planned for a Spring Break build in Columbus, Georgia. Spearheaded by Darrah Sipe ’07 and Ed Wu ’04, Wesleyan’s Habitat for Humanity aims to establish itself more firmly on campus.
“I worked at the Office of Community Service as the Coordinator of Hunger and Homeless Program and I realized that there was no active Habitat for Humanity group on campus,” said Darrah Sipe ’07. “WeShelter seemed to be defunct, so I talked to Cathy Crimmins about starting up at Wesleyan.”
“Habitat for Humanity went dormant after students [who were in charge] graduated,” said Cathy Crimmins, Director of Community Service and Volunteerism.
The group has received support from the University and the Middletown affiliate. Wesleyan’s chapter is partly funded by the WSA and students participated in two builds with the Hartford affiliate this year, according to Sipe.
Although Wesleyan’s chapter has close ties with the Middletown Habitat for Humanity, they have experienced difficulty organizing builds in the area. According to Ed Wu ’04, co-coordinator of Wesleyan’s organization, the Middletown Habitat for Humanity presently has no active on-site builds.
“They have no site manager, someone who can help on builds,” Sipe said.
According to Sipe, Builds in Hartford have been similarly problematic.
“Builds start at 8 a.m. on a Saturday morning in Hartford and I’d get calls at 4 a.m. from students who ‘came in late’ that night and couldn’t make the trip,” Sipe said. “Ideally, we’d like to have weekly builds, at a location near campus.”
In the long-term, Wesleyan Habitat members hope to solidify their community relationships.
“We’d like to forge a stronger relationship with the Middlesex Habitat,” Wu said. “One of the ideas we had in mind was to get Wesleyan to consider selling a house to Habitat for Humanity.”
So far they’ve met with various administrative officials about selling a Wesleyan-owned house to the organization.
“On Monday we came to President Bennett’s round table,” Sipe said. “He thought the idea was interesting, but their priority was to sell the houses to faculty and staff who wanted to live near the campus.”
This hasn’t deteriorated the will of the group to use University land.
“Wesleyan has a piece of land at Long Lane, which we hope they will consider making into workshop/storage space for Habitat,” Wu said. “We can build movable parts for Habitat, and this way we can build around the year. Also, the space can be used together with physical plant.”
Their focus, however, remains on the short-term.
“One of our short-term goals is to have more builds, locally or around the Middletown area,” Wu said.
The group is also planning on leaving March 6 for an inter-school spring break build starting in Columbus, Georgia. Sipe said fifteen students are currently planning to attend.
“It’s great that they want to go on weekly builds. Doing manual labor to physically changing a place,” Crimmins said. “Habitat in general has a wonderful mission and we’re fortunate to have a chapter here at Wes.”
“I hope that the structure of the group is still strong once I graduate. I want to be able to pass on the programs that we have,” Sipe said. “I think a lot of students still don’t know that we exist on campus. As a WSA group, I’d like Habitat to be more popular, ideally attracting more student participation.”
Students interested in further involvement with Wesleyan’s chapter of Habitat for Humanity can e-mail Darrah Sipe at dsipe@wesleyan.edu.
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