Habitat For Humanity

On Saturday, 12 September, nineteen teachers and students from NISC left bright and early for the Habitat for Humanity Cambodia, Jimmy and Roslynn Carter Work Project (JRCWP) Mekong Build site near Uodong.  JRCWP is an effort to build quality, affordable housing for families in need from Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, and China over a one-week period in November. Habitat Cambodia will be building twenty one houses for families who used to make a living at the now closed Steung Meanchey garbage dump and lived in the Domnak Tom Village 1 community. With the closing of the dump, these families now known as the "New Life Community" will be moving into their new homes which will be constructed 15-20 November by over 300 volunteers coming from several different countries. In order to be able to complete these houses in six days, a great deal of advance preparation must be completed before the volunteer teams arrive. The group from NISC travelled to Oudong to help in that preparation by making soil bricks to be used in the construction of the homes. Upon our arrival at the build site, we met the representatives from Habitat who gave us a tour of the future village and informed us about the construction of the houses and the people who would move into them. We were told about some of the safety rules and then shown the step by step process involved in making the 45,000 bricks needed to build the 21 houses.

The NISC group was divided into a number of different work groups and given one of several tasks to perform.  Some of the assigned tasks included moving newly formed bricks to another area for further drying, moving and stacking bricks in front of each of the future houses, carrying the laterite soil to the crusher, mixing soil, cement and sand,  filling the brick making forms and smoothing the brick mix in order to create solid, well made, uniform bricks. Each group got to try their hand at each of the different tasks.

It was a very satisfying and exhausting day for all of the NISC volunteers. At the end of the day, hundreds of ready made bricks had been moved and stacked, tons of soil had been shoveled,  and about 800 new bricks had been made.  While manual labor of this type was no doubt a new experience for many of our students, they did a great job showing the determination and strong work ethic we have come to expect from our students. Everyone was tired, hot and sweaty but filled with the pride of a job well done and feeling good about the fact that we had helped provide decent, safe, affordable housing for 21 families who are moving from dump site to Oudong.  It is hoped that this is just the beginning of a long term relationship between Habitat Cambodia and NISC.

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