We've Hit $1,000!

Very exciting news indeed - thanks to everyone who has donated so far, we have now officially raised $1,090.33 - we are almost at 15% of our goal, thank you!

We have received donations online (woo hoo, the links work!), a donation from the sale of someone's car (how cool is that!?!), several generous donations from the local faith community and we have received an entire room full of items for this Saturday's garage sale (I'd show you a photo but some of you might have a heart attack at the state of our apartment at the moment!).

One of the biggest donations we received was from a colleague of Bruce's - he was trying to sell a very nice solid maple dining room set which included 6 chairs, a table with leaves and a buffet and hutch combination. His ad was still online so late last week we received a call from an interested buyer who came to view the items on Friday. David was very nice and he and his friend were sold on the set so a deal was struck and they left a portion of the payment and we made arrangements for the set to be picked up early this week. As David was leaving he told me how interested he was in the work we would be doing in Africa and told me that he had built some homes in Haiti about 20 years ago. He then asked if there was anything else we needed and I mentioned that we were still looking for donations of items for our garage sale and were also in need of buns for our upcoming BBQ. He left, saying he would be in touch with some other form of support.

Well, less than two hours later he called back to say he had collected over $80 in cash since he had been at our house - I was almost in shock! We were complete strangers to him and he was acting on our behalf to raise funds for our trip - amazing! Of course I thanked him, though I was still close to speechless, and by 9pm that night he called back to say he was in the neighbourhood and wanted to come by and drop off the money he had collected that day. In the envelope, David had collected $125 from his was co-workers at Metro-Lexus Toyota - amazing indeed, thank you David!

On that inspirational note, I'm excited to see what this weekend holds. Our experience with other charity garage sales we have hosted has been so positive and we often meet many people who are already affected by, or are involved, with the cause. So often when we tell others about our trip, they share stories of their own involvement with Habitat or their own experience in Africa. I can't wait to meet more like-minded people this weekend!

Now here's the plug . . . don't forget:

Building For Ghana - Fundraising Garage Sale, Bake Sale & BBQ

Saturday, September 8, 2007
2310 Fernwood Rd
8:00 am-1:00 pm

We're still accepting items so if you've got something to donate, please call or email us and we can make arrangements - we'll be at home tomorrow evening and Friday after 8:45ish. We could especially use baking (home made or not) and a stash or two of plastic bags if you've got them - we've received a large number of clothes so they'll be 'Fill a Bag for $4'.

We could also use an extra hand or two if you're up and at 'em bright and early Saturday and want to help us set everything up between 6:30-8am - any help, if even at 7:59 would be appreciated! As I mentioned, our living room is stacked to the brim and thanks to everyone's donations, we've got a lot of merchandise to move!

So, if you're in the neighbourhood, please stop by. The coffee with be hot, there should be lots of treats (M&M Bars & Zucchini Bread for sure so far) and the hot and veggie dogs will be on the grill at 10am!
As promised here are a few photos of the House Dedication we attended on August 25th.

Over the past two years, volunteers with Habitat for Humanity Victoria have been working alongside the Ahmed and Henderson families to build their homes, a duplex in the Brentwood Bay area of Central Saanich (just north of Victoria and south of Sidney). We hoped on our bikes and took a ride out to witness the dedication ceremony which included an official presentation of house keys to both families, ribbon cuttings, house tours and of course, cake! It truly was a celebration!

Tajudin Ahmed receives the keys to his family's new home from
Habitat Victoria President, Robert Anderson and one of the project supporters.

Both the Ahmed and Henderson families put in over 500 hours into building their homes. The emotion and gratitude was all over their faces and it was amazing to be there to witness this pride in homeownership. Tajudin Ahmed was particularly emotional and I can only imagine this was compounded by the fact that his wife and four children could not be there for the ceremony as they had to return to Ethiopia for a family emergency. We spoke with Taj briefly following the ceremony, over cake and told him of our plans to go to Ghana. He shared a bit about Africa with us and spoke highly of Ghana - we were quickly reminded how much Africa is a continent of contrasts though as Taj told us he can't return to his home country of Ethiopia for political reasons and fear of his safety.

The Henderson family has just cut the ribbon to their new home,
surrounded by volunteers and supporters.

These are extremely lovely homes. They may not appear like a 'typical Habitat home' to some of you who are familiar with Habitat, but in Greater Victoria it is difficult to build any old house, in any old neighbourhood. In this case, this home was built on a lot donated by a local developer. The corner lot is situated at the bottom of the development and up the street, there are several close to $1 million homes. The very exciting news about this development and Habitat's partnership with the developer is that the municipality mandated affordable housing as part of this development. As many of you may know, average house prices in Victoria are amongst the highest in the country ($574,753 as of July) and finding safe, decent affordable housing in Victoria to rent, let alone to by is out of reach for most families. The Henderson's were truly ecstatic to receive their keys - Dave Hnderson spoke after receiving them and couldn't say enough to share his gratitude to everyone involved with Habitat Victoria.

After we had caught up with everyone, had our fill of cake and were almost ready to jump back on our bikes and head home, we realised we hadn't toured the houses yet! So, we carefully removed our shoes at the door and stepped inside. I hadn't been out to the site since early July when the Victoria AbeBooks staff had been out for a Team Build Day to move top soil on one of the warmest days of the summer! At that time, the kitchens were still just drywall, tape and sub-floor and we ate lunch off of a door on a saw horse - now take a look at the finished product:

Brandy & Derek Draper, Habitat Victoria Construction Manager, in the finished
kitchen of the Henderson home - beautifully done Derek and volunteers!

And here is the view point right around the corner from these new homes - all the best to the Ahmed and Henderson families in their beautiful new homes in their beautiful new neighbourhood.

We sure are blessed to live here.

And, as a final note, for those who are interested, Habitat Victoria is also working hard to complete another duplex in Sidney for the Elliott and Forrester/Smith families. We are planning on heading up there one weekend very soon to try our hand at a build site for the very first time! (We figured we should get some heavy labour in before we leave for Ghana!). If you are interested let us know or visit www.habitatvictoria.com to register to volunteer.

That's it, that's all! Good night, good night!