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 Contributing finances or building materials to HFHG or directly to a local Habitat affiliate. To see the financial contribution options available to you as well as to make a quick pledge, CLICK HERE! |
 Praying for the work of Habitat for Humanity Ghana (HFHG) |
 Volunteering with the Habitat program either as:
 an Individual Volunteer
a Corporate Partner
a member of A Global Village Team
as a member of an International Volunteer Programme.
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CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY BUILDS WITH HABITAT GHANA
 The scene at the Doha airport was the same as usual. Long, messy queues at the check-in desks. A large group waiting at the designated “meeting point” just inside the initial security check made up of travelers, friends, and families coming to say goodbye. Last minute overweight baggage drama. Student Affairs has taken plenty of trips before with students, but this one, we soon found out, would raise the bar far beyond our expectations.
On June this year, 8 students and 2 chaperones got on a plane headed for Accra, Ghana with the intention of building houses through Habitat for Humanity’s Global Village program. Few of us had ever done work with Habitat and few of us had ever been to Africa outside of Egypt, so the anticipation was infectiously overwhelming. What would the people be like? What would the food taste like? How hard would the work actually be? The few answers we had were based on books, Habitat documents, and a conversation with a Carnegie Mellon home campus student who grew up in Accra. However, nothing could prepare us for a labor intensive building schedule in the small rural village of Breman Asikuma. We made bricks. We carried the bricks. We made load after load of mortar for the bricks. Four hours in the morning, break for lunch, and another four hours in the afternoon. That was how we spent most of our time in Ghana, but the trip wasn’t just about building houses. It was about learning from others, for which each student had a different and very personal experience.
The beauty of our experiences in Ghana was that everybody came away with a different lesson or a different insight which has significantly impacted their life, their perspective, and their character. What was originally a trip to build houses for others was ultimately a trip to build our identity as global citizens.
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