Last week, Thursday and Friday, we hosted a leaders training session for 19 AmeriCorps team leaders. Beginning in March, they will become team leaders of teams of 10-12 18-24 year old yung men and women- members of NCCC AmeriCorps. This is a federally run program where people sign up for an eleven month tour. During that time, they live and work together, travelling around the country and performing various service projects. One quarter of their four "spikes" is dedicated to working with Habitat affiliates. They are considered volunteers, although they receive a small daily stipend for living expenses (about $4 a day for 3 meals) and at the end, if they successfully complete their tour, they are awarded $5,500 with which they can use to pay down student loans or use for future tuition. It's a great program. I've worked with over twenty N-trip teams and of those, there was only one that I would classify as "a bad team". Most of the time, the teams are bubbling with enthusiasm, show a sincere willingness to learn, are quick studies, and are also quick to pass on what they've learned to their team members. The first of the two days that the greenshirts spent with us, we did a rotating mini-trainings at five stations, 45 minutes each, in the use of power tools, setting up scaffolding, use of hand tools, safety equipment, etc. Brandon (our construction director) offered a prize for the staff member who could say the names of all 19 at the end of the first day. All were issued high quality name tags (duct tape and sharpie) on the first morning. About mid-morning, they thought they would shake us up and switch the nametags around. they put them back, though. At the end of the first day, all staff (Joey, Spephen, and Brandon) got all but one or two and got buzzed out. I was last and saved the day and got 'em all! Woo-Hoo! In the afternoon of th first day we then had them cutting wood and putting it together in the form of Habitat house signs (see them in the background of one of the pictures). Second day, we worked with them framing Jackie Bookers house on 7th street.
      The RV- Care-a-Vanners is another group that is growing in frequency in coming to work with us here . We now have four rigs camped out at the Y's Acres "RV Park". Many of these folks have worked with Habitat affiliates around the country and are quite knowledgeable about construction, and make our jobs easy. Lavern and Sue (group leaders of this batch) basically ran Brenda Anthony's house while we were doing the training of the NCCC's. Don from Kansas left yesterday after working with us for over five weeks.
     The third type of group that worked with us this past week and we hope moreso in the future also is fraternity and sorority brothers and sisters from the University of Alabama. Abunch came out Friday afternoon (unexpected) and we scrambled to find work for them, since we want to strongly ecourage local volunteerism, particularily from a pool of 40,000 students here. That group painted all of the signs that the NCCC guys made and then moved trusses into place to get ready for Monday's roof-raising. A good time was had by all, we most of the walls up, and nobody got hurt. And they cleaned their paint brushes. Trying to give me a heart attack, eh?
     That's all for this week. Gotta go watch the commercials now.   Ciao.   Luv ya.   Peter