October 1, 2003
Rebuilding spirits
Church group helps Freedom Builders repair area 12 houses
By Carol South
Herald contributing writer
From roof to crawl space, kitchen to basement, members of the Westside Community Church completed a variety of repair and maintenance work at 12 houses Saturday afternoon. The volunteer crew was on a mission for Freedom Builders, a four-year-old organization that fixes up homes of low-income families.
Nearly 30 adults and 11 youth from the church completed work at eight homes and started work on the four others. Volunteers will return over the next weeks to finish the remaining tasks.
For this all-day blitz, the church and Freedom Builders partnered with Julie Hay, the Blair Community Learning Center coordinator, to identify the families in need. Hay and Westside Community Church had already built a relationship when the church hosted a soccer camp this summer for 50 Blair youth.
Bringing tools, expertise and love to families is just what Skip Brown, the Freedom Builders founder, had in mind when he started the organization.
A family living paycheck to paycheck - barely keeping a roof over their head - often cannot afford even the most basic home repairs. In addition, single mothers often lack basic home repair knowledge or do not have time to complete them.
For these families, a leaky roof or broken kitchen plumbing, a non-working ceiling fan or cracked storm door must be endured, sometimes for years.
Freedom Builders was created to fill this gap, partnering with churches throughout the area to find volunteers and identify families in need. Brown also has a network of skilled tradesmen who volunteer their plumbing, electrical and other services to the program.
"For the most part, I think the community has forgotten about these folks," said Brown, president of Freedom Builders and also a member of the Westside Community Church. "In our community, people don't understand that we have the need that we do; other than areas like Grawn, the working poor are pretty nondescript and we don't see them."
Brown said that part of the Freedom Builders mission is to show these struggling families that they matter, that someone cares.
"When you spend time with people, there's something given that you can't give with just a check," said Brown, noting that Freedom Builders completes an average of 70 projects a year. "It is just giving back these families a little self esteem and a little value."
"I think the biggest problem the clients we serve have is they've forgotten they are important, not because we say so but because God says so," Brown added.
For one homeowner, the all-day visit from Brown and church volunteers was both heartwarming and a much needed helping hand.
Patty, who declined to give her last name, was thrilled to have volunteers install four new window screens, two storm doors and one entrance door. However, the work quickly expanded to include a general cleaning, organizing and interior paint job, spurred on by 11 youth group members who dug into the task. The youth group members also helped organize her garage and completed some basic landscaping.
"They are great, they are very polite and very, very energetic," Patty said. "It's a beautiful face lifting."
Dawn McConnell, youth group leader for Westside Community Church, was pleased with her crew's tenacity and spirit.
"This is teaching them to reach out in their own community," said McConnell. "Some youth groups go to Mexico or the Appalachians to do service projects but we have needs in our own backyard. So why not help the people who it is going to help most in our own lives?"
Walking the walk locally was what inspired Brown to create Freedom Builders. He had participated in numerous mission trips to inner city areas and the Appalachians, but realized one day that families in the Traverse City area could use help. He searched the country for other non-profit programs providing local home maintenance and repairs but did not find any. So, without anything to model his program after, he just started organizing one.
"It was something I really felt when I came back from that last trip, that God was telling me that we need to go elsewhere to serve but there's also a need here," he said.