Women Gather to Celebrate Habitat East Bay’s Women Build Home
Home made possible by $50,000 grant from Home Interiors & Gifts
On Thursday, August 2nd, more than 50 women volunteers came together to install exterior siding on the future home of Thelma Walls and her family. Habitat for Humanity’s Women Build program actively engages women to build homes while helping to address the issue of affordable housing. Habitat East Bay’s Women Build home at the Edes Avenue development in Oakland is sponsored by Home Interiors Charitable Foundation, which has contributed $50,000 to help complete the home.
Among the volunteers were Olympic Gold Medalist and former Captain of the US Women’s National Soccer Team, Julie Foudy, who was joined by girls from The Julie Foudy Sports Leadership Academy. Julie and her girls worked alongside Habitat East Bay’s All Women’s Crew and Home Interiors & Gifts volunteers.
Country-Western singer/songwriter Miko Marks, New Music Weekly’s “Best New Country Artist 2006,” performed an inspiring concert during the lunchtime program, singing songs from her Freeway Bound CD, including “Find My Way Home.” Other speakers during the program were Diane Agnone, Co-Chair of the Habitat East Bay All Women’s Crew and Pat Darcy of Home Interiors & Gifts. Diane shared a simple message, "to encourage all women who are interested in helping make a difference in their community, and in the world itself, to come and join us. You get to see the tangible results of where all your time and talent and in some cases even your money, have gone – and you will get the added benefit of making a difference in your own life too." Pat expressed her delight to be a part of the project, and her enthusiasm was met with the applause of the Home Interiors Design Consultants in attendance.
As a company whose focus is typically on the interior of a home, helping build an entire home holds a special appeal for Home Interiors & Gifts who is sponsoring the house with funds raised entirely through special products the company’s independent Decorating Consultants sold to benefit Habitat for Humanity.
The Home Interiors & Gifts-sponsored home is seventh Women Build project taken on by Habitat for Humanity East Bay’s women volunteers and donors, and one of more than 1,000 Habitat for Humanity houses built by women crews throughout the United States. Women Build, underwritten by Lowe’s, enables women to learn construction skills and to use these skills to help move families out of poverty.
About the Women Build/Home Interiors & Gifts Partnership:
To date Home Interiors & Gifts, Inc., North America’s largest direct seller of home décor products, has donated nearly $2 million to Habitat for Humanity’s Women Build program. Underwritten by Lowe’s, the Women Build program’s mission is to make homeownership a reality for families in need by recruiting, nurturing and training women to build and maintain simple, decent, healthy and affordable homes. Home Interiors Decorating Consultants continue to raise funds for Women Build by selling special products to benefit Habitat for Humanity. For more information, visit www.habitat.org/wb or www.homeinteriors.com.
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