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Instead, the Ohio college students opted for a road trip to southeastern Minnesota to build a home with Habitat for Humanity.
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Program Adviser Amy Richardson, front, and Shawnee State University students, from left, Jarad Cahall, Angel Noland, and Tabitha Reveal put together a wall to make a garage for a house in Sunny Acres in Goodview on Thursday. The group of 22 students and two adivsers from Ohio have been here since Monday and are using their spring break to work with Habitat for Humanity building the house up from the ground. (photo by Katie Derus/Winona Daily News) |
Habitat is one of many organizations offering a new craze for spring breakers with not a lot to spend — alternative spring breaks.
These vacations bring students to new places with a social justice theme attached.
This spring break, 12,000 students have signed up for Habitat’s Collegiate Challenge, building homes in more than 200 towns and cities across the country.
Twenty-four students from Shawnee University in Portsmouth, Ohio, made the 14-hour trek north to build a new home in the Sunny Acres subdivision of Goodview.
“It’s a new adventure,” said group adviser Amy Richardson.
When the first wall went up on Wednesday, the group gathered by it and took pictures of it in awe and pride.
Erecting the walls is the best part, said Noland, a first-time Habitat volunteer.
“You see what you’re getting done,” she said.
Seeing the progress from start to finish is what makes home-building rewarding, Richardson added.
“For people who do this on a daily basis, it might not seem like a lot,” she said. “But for these students to see something they’ve done — this structure — they built it.”
When completed, the 1,200-square foot, three-bedroom home will be sold to a family at cost — all labor is volunteer. Materials were estimated at $100,000, said construction coordinator John Corcoran.
Volunteer coordinator Jennifer Koth said that Habitat’s Winona County chapter is still in the application process for selecting a buyer.
The lot was purchased by Habitat before the August floods hit Sunny Acres, causing at least $50,000 worth of damage to more than half the area’s 50 homes.
Construction at the new lot was halted as Habitat volunteers focused on rebuilding flood-damaged homes, much of the relief coming from local volunteers.
“That put a kink in the plan, but we did what we had to do to help them,” Corcoran said.
The group ended work Thursday afternoon, after putting nearly 750 “sweat” hours into it.
When they started Monday, it was a cement slab with a wall in between.
Though not quite ready to be called “home,” the wooden structure is well on its way, with the help of college students who traded suntan lotion for a hammer.
“It’s awesome that so many students were going north,” Richardson said. “It takes a special group of students.”
