Oakton’s Habitat for Humanity chapter spends spring break on service project

Twenty-two students from Oakton Community College’s Habitat for Humanity chapter gave up their recent spring break to pick up hammers and nails to provide affordable housing for a single mother and her infant in Starkville, Mississippi.

“The world needs people to give back and make it a better place than they found it,” said Oakton Habitat Chapter President Nicole Fujiwara of Glenview. “Not everyone is well off and it’s our duty as human beings to help others.”

According to Oakton Habitat Advisor Marvin Bornschlegl, they provided 960 hours of manpower helping build the house in addition to providing support at a local Habitat for Humanity ReStore—the organization’s donation and retail center.

Bornschlegl said that building a house takes approximately three months, and the Oakton chapter was able to make significant progress during its week-long stay, picking up where another Habitat chapter from Rockford left off. When the group from Oakton arrived, the structure had walls and rafters, and they left the house roofed and fully shingled.

“An amazing part of the trip was seeing all of our hard work and effort transformed into something tangible,” Fujiwara explained. “We literally helped provide a roof over someone’s head.”

Bornschlegl said that students on the trip had to make other sacrifices such as providing over $150 for materials for the project.

Oakton students said upon returning to the college, they noticed a distinct change in the members who made the trip.

“We were all strangers at the beginning of the trip,” said Andrew Tieng, a Glenview resident. “But after the trip, we had all bonded as friends. Coming back to Oakton, instead of just saying ‘hi,’ we would sit down and have a conversation because we shared experiences we wouldn’t have had if we just stayed home during spring break.”