Quite a number of things have
happened since my last blog post. Firstly, shortly after we came back to
school, we began selling the bracelets during lunch and break times. We quickly
found out, however, that it was becoming increasingly difficult to find time to
fund raise, what with preparing all the products and what not, with the
immediately busy schedule of grade 12, and the fact that the majority or our
group are involved in the year book committee (not including myself) which has
just started up and is at the moment requiring a large amount of work. With
things only likely to get busier over the course of the school year with all
the IAs, EE, TOK, etc., and based upon the amount of money that we have been
able to raise so far, it became quite unlikely for us that we will be able to
raise the required 30 million rupiah to finance the building of one complete
house, especially keeping in mind that Habitat for Humanity will also have its
own deadline regarding when they need to receive the donation by. As such, we
have agreed to instead donate just as much money as we manage to put together,
and join in an upcoming event held by Habitat for Humanity called “28uild”
where we will be helping to build houses at a local community. We will pay for
the registration fee for the event partly using the money that we have managed
to fundraise, as well as donating our personal funds, donate the remainder of
the amount that we managed to fundraise to Habitat for Humanity, for them to
use to continue help build houses for the less fortunate throughout the
country. In this way, we will still be helping a family (or families) receive
better and more adequate housing through Habitat for Humanity, though we have
not managed to raise enough to singularly pay for the building of a single
house for a single family.
The “28uild” event that we
registered for was held on this day, October the 18th, 2014. The
event was on this date to coincide with the national “young adult” day as a way
to ask us the young generation to help make a change. After we arrived at the
site of the event, we witnessed a simple opening ceremony that the committee
had put together. We then got ready to build. There were many other
participants in the event, beside ourselves, and we were all divided into
groups that were sent to different building sites. We learned that the building
process has already started throughout the nearby area, and more than one
building was being built by Habitat for Humanity. These “sites” for the
buildings were at various stages of construction, and depending on the site that
you are assigned, you work on a different aspect of the building process, from
the very initial laying of the foundations, to the final step of painting the walls
of the finished buildings. The participants of these events were divided into
groups to be distributed to the various building sites. My friends and I
decided that we should stick together, and so we went with a building group
that was large enough to accommodate all of us that were present.
The site that our group was assigned
to featured two sections/posts that have to do with the earliest step of the
building process, which is laying out and raising the foundations of the
building. The first section/post was the digging of troughs in a marked area
for the foundations of the building. Once the troughs are dug, rocks are placed
within the troughs, and cement is mixed and poured into the spaces between the
rocks, forming the foundation for the building. At the other post, we were
building rectangular metal columns for the building, by attaching metal
rectangles to long metal rods using metal wires that we twist with pliers. The
long metal rods are placed inside the metal rectangles, so that there is one
metal rod inside each corner of the rectangle. The metal rectangles are
attached to the metal rods at intervals along the whole length of the metal
rods. This therefore creates metal columns. While some attached the metal
rectangles to the metal rods, others shape short metal rods into the metal
rectangles using tools.
For myself, I first helped at the
second post described above. I worked on fastening the metal rectangles to the
long rods. Though there were quite a lot of us (approximately 6 of us I think
working together on one column) it was quite a time consuming job, especially
at the beginning when we were just getting the hang of the job and were still
making a number of mistakes, such as not tightening the wires used to attach
the metal rectangles to the rods tight enough, or leaving to much extra wire
afterwards. At first, we had to redo a few of the connections that we made.
There was a lunch break, in which we
ate food that we had brought ourselves. After the lunch break, we continued
with our work. At first, I picked up where I had left off with the work of creating
the metal columns. Later on though, I migrated to the other post, where they
were setting up the foundation for the houses, when they were pouring in the
cement and helped out there. Personally, I own up that I was not as productive
after the lunch break as before it. I also felt that the event ended quite
quickly, but I think that that was due to the fact that most of the
participants have to travel back quite far from the Habitat for Humanity site
back to the place where they met up. We were more fortunate as the location of
the site is closer to home for some of us.
All in all, it was a wonderful
experience. It was definitely something new, and really enjoyable I felt. I
think that I would enjoy being part of a similar event.
Aside from going to this event, as
we have planned, the money we managed to raise we donated with Habitat for
Humanity to aid them as they continue with their work.
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