Hundreds of volunteers building 25 homes in Manitoba in former U.S. president’s Habitat project

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This article was published 10/07/2017 (2984 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Just eight years ago, Sara Tesfa was making life-and-death decisions to get out of a refugee camp in Sudan after fleeing her home country of Eritrea.

Now Tesfa, who came to Canada in 2009, was deciding what colour and style of kitchen cupboards she would have inside her new home, one of 21 new homes being constructed by volunteers with Habitat for Humanity’s Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter Work Project.

“I chose grey,” Tesfa, a mother of five children ranging in age from 17 to nine months, said on Monday as she took a quick break from wielding a hammer constructing her house.

“I was watching it on his (Scott McGillivray) TV show and saw a kitchen with grey cupboards and I liked what I saw.

“And I like grey.”

Tesfa is one of the 21 soon to be new-home owners thanks to Habitat for Humanity. Sixteen of the homeowners will be living on Lyle Street, the site of the Winnipeg Police Service’s former St. James district station, while another five homes being constructed at the site are ready to move (RTM) houses that will be transported to sites elsewhere in the city.

With a chorus of hammers and saws, for the 34th time, Habitat for Humanity’s Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter Work Project came to life Monday morning.

More than 500 volunteers — including soon-to-be-homeowners, construction workers and volunteers — began working on putting supports and plywood onto open foundations to create the main floor of each house.

By the end of Friday, 16 homes will be brought to lock-up stage while the five RTMs will be ready to move from the site. Two more homes will be constructed in Portage la Prairie while another two homes will be built in Brandon to bring to 25 homes Manitoba’s contribution to the work project.

This year’s project is building 150 homes across the country in celebration of Canada’s 150th birthday.

The former U.S. president and first lady were in the city in 1993 and helped build 18 Habitat homes in the North End. They are currently working on the project in Edmonton and will be working on the homes in Winnipeg on Thursday and Friday.

Little more than two hours after the first hammering started, Habitat for Humanity Manitoba CEO Sandy Hopkins said the project was on schedule. But Hopkins said there really is no set schedule.

“We don’t set targets on site,” Hopkins said.

“The work we get done each day is our objective… but by the end of the day all the walls will be up and by (Tuesday) night the roofs will start going up.

“We do that when people are gone so we don’t have to stop the work site.”

Hopkins said there will be 500 volunteers working each day out of a pool of about 1,600 who have signed up.

And Hopkins said while the main build will end on Friday, the work goes on next week with various trades including electrical, plumbing and heating.

McGillivray, who stars in home building type shows on HGTV, said he has been involved with Habitat for a decade, physically working on 100 of their home construction projects.

“This is probably the most organized build I’ve seen,” he said.

“It is fast, but there’s quality in these homes. The people who will own them work hard and they deserve a good home.”

McGillivray said he can’t imagine what someone like Tesfa went through to get here.

“Sara was making decisions on getting out of a refugee camp and now she’s choosing cupboards for a kitchen,” he said.

“That’s wonderful.”

Tesfa didn’t want to talk much about the refugee camp she was in for four years after leaving Eritrea.

“It was not good – there was a lot of pain,” she said.

Tesfa said she was glad when she came to Canada and this province to be able to live in a Manitoba Housing apartment on Mayfair Avenue, but she’ll be even more glad when she can be inside her own house.

“I’m so excited and my kids are so excited,” she said. “I took the bus out here several times in recent months to see the site and to see the neighbourhood.

“I want to be here.”

 

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca