Foundation Stories
Habitat for Humanity Tool Fund
“We build homes for low-income folks, and it’s mostly all volunteer labor that we use to construct the homes,” says Tom Mesko, executive director of Habitat for Humanity in Centre County. “With volunteer labor, the tools that we use really take a beating over time because our volunteers don’t have to have any experience using tools at all. We have to continually replace them to make sure that they’re in safe operating order. So we wrote a grant to the Community Foundation and they graciously donated $11,000 that will allow us to slowly replace our tools and update them with new technology.”
Naturally, training the volunteers is necessary, particularly with power tools. “We actually employ a full-time site superintendent and a part-time site superintendent,” Mesko says. “And whenever we have volunteers on one of our work sites doing construction, the [superintendents] are always there. So if someone’s never picked up a circular saw before and they want to try it, our site superintendent shows them how to do it, the safety features and everything. Some folks have never used a drill before either, so we teach them that, too. We do not, however, allow any pneumatic nailers, air nailers or framing nailers on our work sites because those are even more dangerous. Even people that have used them in the past can injure themselves quite badly with those.”
Habitat for Humanity is also a training ground for new homeowners, as well, and Mesko explains that they are expected to work alongside the volunteers during the construction process. “By doing that they can take more of a sense of ownership in their home, but they can also see how their house goes together. Then, as things come up and they have to make small repairs on the house, they’ll know how to do it.”
Mesko, who has been with this organization since 2004, is grateful for the support they’ve received from the Centre County Community Foundation who, at one point, actually co-sponsored one of the homes that they built.
“I think just about every year they’ve contributed some amount to us,” he says. “So they’ve been very generous.”
