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March 16, 2008

Marquette University students back in Enid to help Habitat for Humanity

By Cass Rains Staff Writer

This week, 12 students from Marquette University in Milwaukee will spend their spring break by helping build a home with Enid’s Habitat for Humanity.

The students will help build a 1,200 square-foot, four bedroom, two bathroom home for an Enid family, said the Rev. Richard Dunn, executive consultant for Enid Habitat for Humanity

“It’s pretty much exactly like the last two we’ve built,” Dunn said.

Janine Amos, 20, of the Seattle suburbs, is a junior bio-medical engineering major at Marquette and is a facilitator for the trip.

A facilitator is responsible for keeping in contact with local resources, getting the volunteers together and ac-quainted before they start a trip. A goal of the university is to bring people together who don’t know each other.

Amos said the students left Milwaukee at 8 a.m. Friday and made it Enid about 16 hours later.

She said the trip gives students a chance to physically help someone and see their project progress throughout the week.

“I think all of us have this week to do our own thing,” she said. “It gives us a chance to help people out.”

Amos said she was part of a Habitat for Humanity program at her high school, but this will be her first time to actually build a home.

Unlike his three roommates, Chris Estes also will spend the week working alongside his classmates on the house being built on Forest Ridge.

“All of my three roommates are doing the stereotypical spring break thing,” said Estes, 22, of Steven’s Point, Wis., a senior electrical engineering major.

Instead of heading to Mexico or a Florida beach, Estes said he wanted to take in his third Marquette Action Program.

“You get to make 12 new friends and at the end of the trip you get to help people,” he said.

Estes said he was having an experience that could only be had in Enid by building a home, unlike the trips his roommates were taking.

“I think I’m going to have more fun because they’re having an experience they could have in Milwaukee,” he said.

Dunn said the home, when completed, will go to an Enid family with a no interest 20-year loan for the $55,000 home. However, the homeowners must invest 300 hours of sweat equity, or work on the house, before they’re given the home.

He said Enid Habitat for Humanity builds between 11⁄2 and two homes a year but is wanting to build more.

“We’re hoping to double the number of houses we’re building this year,” Dunn said. “We’d like to build four houses this year.”

He said anyone wishing to donate money, materials and supplies, or labor can call the Enid Habitat for Humanity office at 237-4737.

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