See Beautiful Black & White

This was supposed to be my {This Moment} See Beautiful post on Friday but I came home from volunteering for the second week at Habitat for Humanity feeling a bit under the weather and very tired and I was unable to finish my post.  The post was going to be titled {This Moment} See Beautiful: Build Beautiful…

because sometimes to actually See Beautiful 
you have to build the beautiful yourself.

One of the great things about volunteering with Habitat for Humanity is that you can build beautiful in so many ways.  Sure, it great to help build a beautiful home; to see your accomplishments at the end of the day and really feel that you have made an impact not just for one family, but for your community.  But the month of March allows me to Build Beautiful in another way as well…

it allows me to help build the next generation of volunteers and volunteer leaders.

March at Habitat for Humanity is Collegiate Challenge.  Affiliates all over the country participate as hosts to college students who are willing to forgo the traditional Spring Break vacation of sunning themselves on the beach all day and partying all night for a chance to build Habitat homes each day. 

The students get to work alongside, and get to know, the future homeowners for the houses they are working on.  They get to learn how hard it is to work full-time, raise a family and want something so strongly that 400 hours of sweat equity (the future homeowners’ volunteer hours investment) is well worth every last drop of energy, sweat and tears.

This photo is from the first week of March.  The students got to work with homeowner Latina on her neighbor’s Habitat home.  The next day we moved over to Latina’s future home but Latina had to work so they wanted to send her a message in the morning letting her know they were taking good care of her future home.  They put their hearts and souls into their work that day and the rest of the week.

Whether or not these students continue to volunteer with Habitat for Humanity doesn’t really matter.  I would love it if they did, but their hearts and passion may belong to another cause.  I just hope their experience here gives them the motivation to Build Beautiful by volunteering in their communities…

so there is more Beautiful for all of us to see.

Thank you to Sugar the Golden Retriever for hosting the {This Moment}: See Beautiful blog hop each month and to both Sugar and Dachshund Nola for hosting Black & White Sunday.