Author: lfrisbie

The 2018 October Madness Auction was enjoyed by all and was a huge success! We raised nearly $7,000 to House of Hope, Eye Heart World and Women in Building Education Awards via NWTC Scholarships.

BCHBA Staff were on site at Howe Elementary School for their Career Day on Friday, February 27, 2015.

Executive Officer, Mari McAllister-Charles talked to fifth grade classes about careers in the building industry.

Six mini-sessions were held and students learned about different career paths as well as participating in a hands-on building project courtesy of Home Depot.

The BCHBA has made it an initiative to ensure that students of all ages are aware of the different opportunities for skilled laborers in the industry.

The Brown County Home Builders Association, along with other community supporters, has partnered with neighborWorks®  Green Bay on their latest renovation project. The premise of the partnership is to use high school students to complete the renovation.

The latest project was a two-flat home that will provide safe, affordable housing for two families of modest means. An open house was held to tour the homes located at 301 and 303 S. Oakland Street.

Each day, students from West High School gathered at the property to learn skills such as carpentry, framing, siding, etc. The students learned valuable lessons and skills about the building trades and will receive college credit at NWTC.

This will be the first of many projects that the  BCHBA will partner on!

Congratulations to Executive Officer, Mari McAllister-Charles, who was named as one of You Magazine’s “20 Women to Know.”  The 20 Women to Know issue is an annual publication of You Magazine. It honors influential women who are inspiring conversations, shaping their organizations and changing the way we do business in the community.

The Brown County Home Builders Association recently donated funds to allow the UW Green Bay Collegiate Chapter of Habitat for Humanity to take a mission trip to the Philippines. Here is a note of thanks from their team for helping to make the amazing experience a possibility:

We are back from our Habitat for Humanity Global Village trip to the Philippines. It was absolutely the experience of a lifetime. Words fail us. Suffice it to say that, for us, the housing communities where we worked showed us poverty on a scope and scale unimaginable here. The need for safe, durable, affordable housing in this country is profound, with a backlog of nearly four million people living in urban slums. But, unexpectedly, the communities we served were unusually vibrant – there were small micro-economies within the slums with businesses and services – and the people were kind, grateful and generous. I have traveled some myself, and I believe that the Filipino people are among the nicest, most polite, happiest people I have ever met.

The work we did was hard and manual. The tools on hand were buckets, shovels, pick axes to break rock, hacksaws to cut re-bar, etc. Everything we did in a week (mostly digging holes in soil and rock, mixing concrete, and setting foundation footings and building support columns) would have been done in a half day here with a back hoe and a jackhammer. It took 26 of us a full week to do it by hand (11 of us from the US, joined by 15 college students from Japan). But we did not go there to judge, just to contribute our labor and immerse ourselves in this culture and community, and that we did.

There is no way that ten college kids from Wisconsin can have an experience like this and not have their world view permanently altered. The same is true for me. We return home humbled, and deeply moved by our experience.

We can’t thank you enough for your generous donation to our trip. With much gratitude for helping to make this possible, Mike Stearney and the team.