BUILDIN’ A HOUSE!!
I spent last summer in Tamil Nadu, India building houses for needy families as a part of the ICHEC-India Housing Project. ICHEC is a business university located in Brussels, Belgium. Student-led teams spend the month of July in rural villages constructing one home per team member for local families. The houses are no larger than a typical college dorm room, yet they house six to ten people. The experience was, needless to say, life changing, and it totally reaffirmed my involvement in the ONE Campaign. In Sankagiri, the village I was staying in, I met a 26 year old named Xavier who had a mental handicap. Xavier was always around to lend a helping hand, and even tried to offer the team gifts when we were leaving the village. Near the end of our stay in Sankagiri, the team learned that Xavier was actually homeless. He earned a bit of money from his work at a local church, but had no real source of income. He also took care of his older mother, who had no job. The priest at the local church asked if we could fund the construction of a home for Xavier, but we were already committed to building homes for specific families.
Upon return to the US, we learned that only $1200 was needed to put a solid roof over Xavier’s head. The members of the Clemson ONE Campaign decided to fund this expense with the money we had raised over the past three semesters by hosting fair trade festivals through the Ten Thousand Villages organization.
This is why I love the ONE Campaign! Normal people, normal students, band together as ONE to change lives thousands of miles away. I think our generation really senses the urgency of the poverty facing millions and millions of people around the world. Building one house has a small impact, but changing the way people think about poverty and the way our government addresses poverty can change millions of lives. KEEP UP THE GREAT WORK OCC-ers!!
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