Habitat For Humanity’s Playhouse Project Raises Funds For New Home Projects

NASHUA, NH — The next Greater Nashua Habitat for Humanity (GNHFH) Playhouse Project fundraiser is scheduled for Sept. 15, on-site at The Biergarten at Anheuser-Busch in Merrimack.

According to Executive Director Christa Tsechrintzis, “We love this new fundraiser, which helps us to tell the community more about the Habitat for Humanity cause, while partnering with sponsors to build a playhouses that ultimately provides children with a safe place to play and imagine what home means to them. Funds raised go toward building new houses. This is the second time this event is happening locally.

Sponsorships of these playhouses ensures that Greater Nashua Habitat for Humanity raises the funds necessary to support our programs, and places our sponsor’s names in front of a large, engaged, and passionate community of donors, volunteers, and community leaders during the event, and the days and the weeks to follow.”

The goal is to secure sponsorship for six playhouses, at a cost of $2,500 each. Sponsors can build the house, but GNHFH can match financial sponsors with volunteer builders, if necessary.

“This can be a great team building activity for our sponsor organizations,” Tsechrintzis said.

On the scheduled build day in October, Habitat volunteers and staff will be on hand all day to guide builders and their teams through the entire process, which took about five hours last year. Habitat for Humanity also provides all the materials the teams need like paint, paintbrushes, rollers, tools, protective paper/plastic, safety equipment, and cleanup supplies. Each playhouse is pre-cut by Habitat volunteer crews before the build day and are brought to the build sight at Anheuser-Busch in Merrimack, so builders can fabricate and decorate the structures. Builders are encouraged to be creative in their decorating: and can pick the colors of their design, use stickers, decals, stencils, and add window treatments, if they would like.

One of the previously build playhouses was donated to the Front Door Agency.

“This playhouse provides a unique opportunity for the children of our Transformational Housing Program to enjoy pretend play which is vital to their development. This would not have been made possible without the partnership of our longtime supporters Law Logistics and Habitat for Humanity’s vision to bring this activity/fundraiser to fruition. Not only will this serve as a wonderful play space for generations of kiddos residing in our program for years to come, but also provides brand recognition as it depicts our logo perfectly. We are truly grateful to Law Family Companies (who sponsored that playhouse) and Habitat for Humanity of Greater Nashua.”

The 2022 playhouse project was supported by Kimball Physics, Law Family Companies, Positive Street Art, Front Door Agency Board of Directors, United Way of Greater Nashua, and the Habitat for Humanity Board of Directors.

The Kimball Physics playhouse, with a Space and Cosmos theme, was raffled off after previously built. The Barulli/Hickey/Tsechrintzis families won the raffle and then donated the playhouse to one of their family’s charities of choice: St. Jude Children’s Hospital, through the local Fitness for A Cure gala/auction held in March. “We were so excited that the Habitat playhouse also raised funds for another wonderful organization,” Tsechrintzis said. (Kimball Physics is a high-tech manufacturer of scientific instruments.)

Kimball Physics’ Engineering Manager James Popovitch who was part of the build team shared that partnering with GNHFH was perfectly aligned with their company’s mission: “To advance humankind by doing good physics – specifically electron optics and vacuum physics – and all the while growing, being good citizens, making a living, and having fun.”

“Our Citizens Committee looks for opportunities to work within the community so we can fulfill our mission. We had an absolute blast working on this project! We even recruited staff outside of our Citizen Committee, which helped us fulfill (company founder) Chuck Crawford’s emphasis on mission. We’ve garnered a strong reputation in giving back to the community. We would love to participate again,” he said.

The United Way of Greater Nashua was the raffle winner of the playhouse painted by Positive Street Art. This playhouse was retrofitted to be a 24-hour food pantry drop off location, now housed at the Crossway Christian Church in Nashua. It has a full size door and shelving to hold donated non-perishable food items.

For information on how you can volunteer or financially support Habitat for Humanity, reach out to Executive Director Christa Tsechrintzis at christa.tsechrintzis@nashuahabitat.org or by calling 603-883-0295, Ext. 11. Learn more here: nashuahabitat.org/.

Submitted by the Greater Nashua Habitat for Humanity.