Program Information

Volunteers who have participated in “gap year” or mission trip experiences report that they find the work very meaningful, even life changing. As a result, we have developed a cadre of volunteers who want to continue to serve others under ServCorps’ auspices in the Hartford Region. We have taken advantage of the construction expertise built up in years of disaster relief work by collaborating with organizations such as NINA and Youthbuild, looking to increase the amount of owner occupied and affordable housing stock in the city of Hartford. We restore historic but blighted houses, using a large amount of volunteer labor to control costs to keep the homes affordable. We train and oversee volunteers from an increasingly wide range of organizations and groups across the Hartford Region. In fact, our work in Hartford with NINA has become a significant portion of our efforts. Although we have collaborated with Habitat For Humanity in the past and may well do so again in the future, we differ from that organization in two ways: we will do rehabilitation work, and we will oversee the work of volunteers as young as Freshmen in high school. 

Overview

With a strong foundation of experience from organizing mission trips for Asylum Hill Congregational Church, our President and founder, Rich Grobe, has overseen more than 20 ServCorps trips to disaster stricken communities in Puerto Rico, Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, and in recent years, multi-week trips to Biloxi, Mississippi in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. The YouthBuild Hartford Program has sent seven different graduates on these trips, and the success of this endeavor has led to an expanded collaboration between our two organizations.

Ever expanding our service nationally, this past fall we spent two weeks in Townshend, VT, assisting the local hospital there to restore administrative areas and to build a new community  room and handicapped access ramp.  In the spring of 2010, we traveled to the Galveston, TX area to help with hurricane recovery there as we began new collaborations in that community.  In June, we journeyed to the Cape Cod area to help restore historic cottages at the Craigville Conference Center for the Massachusetts Conference of The United Church of Christ.

Rebuilding Lives while Rebuilding Homes

Five years ago, Hurricane Katrina caused so much devastation to the Gulf Coast of the United States that people there are still trying to recover. Older people and people with health problems were particularly hard hit, lacking the resources to rebuild. For over a year, Tom and Judy Evans lived in a small, cramped FEMA trailer with their 16 year old granddaughter while they waited for help in rebuilding their home. Mrs. Evans suffered from advanced diabetes, and her husband had to take her to dialysis three times a week. In conjunction with Asylum Hill Congregational Church in Hartford, CT and LeMoyne Boulevard Baptist Church in D’Iberville, MS, ServCorps raised the money to pay for the building materials and organized 3 weeks of volunteer labor to build the house from scratch. Volunteers from other churches finished the job, and the Evans family moved into their new home by Christmas.

We believe that young people can benefit from taking a break at some point in their years after high school to engage in community service internships lasting up to a year. When placed away from home with a service organization of their choice, young people grow in self confidence and character, achieving greater clarity about what they want to do or study in the future. ServCorps helps young people to identify and obtain volunteer placements throughout the United States.  

A fundamental goal for our young clients is to encourage a lifelong commitment to helping other people. After graduating from high school, one young man spent a year as a ServCorps intern working at Cleveland Habitat for Humanity. Since graduating from college, he has volunteered his time as a supervisor and trainer on ServCorps construction projects and as a Director on the ServCorps Board.

The YouthBuild Hartford Program of Co-opportunity Inc. works with inner city, at-risk young people, many of whom have dropped out of high school. The program helps them to obtain their high school equivalency and teaches them construction skills to increase their employability. Our connection to YouthBuild grew out of the relationships and caring that developed as a result of taking program graduates along on our mission trips to rebuild in Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina. Our adult volunteers admired the efforts of the young people and, upon returning to Hartford, were distressed to see them struggling to find.

As a result, ServCorps has begun hiring YouthBuild graduates for year-long construction internships in order to help prepare and transition them to private sector jobs or to college. We also work with presently enrolled YouthBuild participants, teaching them both workforce and construction skills as they work to complete their PACT certification and their community service requirement. The most effective method of mentoring and teaching these skills is to use a very low student to mentor ratio.  Finding appropriate placements in this work environment remains a significant challenge.