Anyone here ever volunteer with Habitat for Humanity? I'm in my second year studying Mechanical Engineering and I feel like I'm not doing enough with my life to be the best me and differentiate myself from my peers. Also I feel like I could learn some very useful skills. Do you think it's worth it?
I joined and get the e-mails all the time but have never actually done anything. I really should go but I'm lazy.
I'd say doing anything to help others is always worth it.
habitat for humanity is bullshit, spend your time else where.
When they are not billing full inflated retail prices for donated materials, they are stealing every energy credit or improvement incentive the owner will ever recieve.
and then they will give it to a black single mother with 7 kids who destroy the house in a few years.
I could go on but the point is made and there is google.
>>916140
>Habitat for Humanity
no
just no
can you not tell just from the name it is fake and hypocritical as fuck?
>>916199
My local HfH store has really good prices.
>>916199
I bet you're from the south.
I'm an engineer, and I remember that sentiment. I volunteered with HFH, thinking they would love to have a budding engineer's mind on site to help tinker and design and fix things. Instead, I sat at a table and handed out sandwiches and water to the idiots running around and swinging hammers and being general fuckups.
Engineers without borders is a tad better. Not by much though. At least that has potential for travel. At the end of the day, you're really not helping anyone, just padding your resume. More than happy to help if you have any other engineering questions.
>>916738
I also joined EWB at my school. It's ok, but it seems more fun for the people who have been in it for a couple years and have positions (president, and heads of the 3 divisions) and actually do real engineering things. But my friends are in it, so that makes meeting and what not enjoyable.
>>916140
I have never done anything for free and never will.
>>916758
I have and will. The diversity, oh, the diversity!
>>916760
just culturally enrich my shit up yo
>>916758
>I have never done anything for free and never will.
Typical.
Selfish kid. If anybody helps you out in life you'll change your tune but that's not going to happen with that attitude.
>>916717
True. I got a Steelcase Leap chair for $25. It was used but in near perfect shape. It's really random what they have at the ReStore any given week.
HFH is ok, cept you have to remember you are building a house for some single nigger mom and her 8 nigglets living on welfare and foodstamps. they get a brand new house for cheap while you are still working 40 hours a week to pay for your slumlord apartment that costs 2x as much as the paymetns on this new nigger house with brand new everything...
you are working for the niggers
>>916792
Hey buddy, you accidently posted on /diy/ instead of /pol/ simple mistake, but you can head back over there now.
HfH is fine. I've worked on a few builds. They were all for white families who lost their homes due to fire or just shitty upkeep.
They usually start you out going grunt work unless you actually know anything about construction. Then they like to jump you up to doing shit out of your league.
Will look good on a college app. Real world jobs don't give a fuck about volunteering though.
>>916140
hfh looks like the company from dilbert
isn't there a barn raising or a museum restoration project you can pitch in on?
>>916719
I'm a yankee, but my experience with Habitat was the same. Helped with two homes, never again.
They may be worth working for if you life in a white area, otherwise you're just building a house for some ghetto queen who'll have the place wrecked in a few years. Blacks are thankful for absolutely nothing and treat anything you give them or rent to them like shit, then demand whitey give dem more.
I tried to work with them once and they never responded to my e-mails. Honestly I'm kind of glad I didn't.
>>916799
I've helped with a few as well. My ex-gfs dad was getting a house built by them. Lied by saying that the kids lived with him full time. I worked on other houses so he could get enough volunteer hours to have the house built for him as well. Majority of the people in that program might as well be niggers. Morally bankrupt assholes. I haven't personally known any blacks to stoop so low. But then again, I've only known a few.
>>916140
Well you can volunteer your services at
volunteermatch.org
I worked at menards for a hot minute and the local habitat "boss/lead contractor" was a raging lesbian and was more bitter about life than the Vietnam/career long army vets I worked with. Although hilarious to hear her trying to flirt with the millennial female cashiers. Seriously she was a raging bitch.
>>916884
Sounds like my kind of woman.
>>916788
>True. I got a Steelcase Leap chair for $25. It was used but in near perfect shape. It's really random what they have at the ReStore any given week.
Good deal. Yeah I like to drop by when I can and it is hit and miss as to something I want to purchase but find it interesting regardless.
Pray that they never build one of their clap traps across the street from you. Instant 20% reduction in your property value.
A lot of that is the kind of retards they move in to those.
>get house for free
>spend welfare check at 7-11
>don't bother purchasing uppity rich snob stuff like curtains
>insist on fucking on your kitchen table with all the lights on while Mongoloid kids watch sponge Bob in the ajoined eat-in living room
Would at least be amusing is she were <200lbs
>>918552
they dont get the house for free, they have to make payments but they get the house interest free
>>916140
Be a Big Brother.
>>916792
Yep shit sux, wellform reform never.
>>918612
This is true but they always lose the house. My mom was the local chapter's accountant for a while and over three years six different houses were foreclosed and the families kicked out because they spent all their welfare on drugs or shitty furniture and electronics from rent-a-center or junk food. And because the houses are built by do gooder soccer moms and liberal arts students they are claptraps that fall apart and can't be sold, let alone the damage Shenaenae and her eight kids and string of druggie boyfriends did in it.
>>916199
there's good prices & quantity of wood stains, shellacs and varnishes at the one near me
>>916140
Join the Klan
>>916140
I've had the opportunity to work with a single homeless mother and her children to build their first home and get them out of living in a car.
If I could make a living do this; it would be all that I do.
I highly encourage you to participate. Give something to a world that has given to you.
>>918775
>participate. Give something to a world that has given to you.
I'm guessing you're parents have rose-tinted basement windows?
World never gave me anything. And I thank the world for that. That's why I never had to ask.
I pay more in taxes than most people earn in a year, then they dump these clowns in my neighborhood as if I'm going to be a role model or something? Maybe my like minded neighbors and I will get together and prop them up because we have a lot at stake in our neighborhood? Fuck that. If a lot comes up for sale, get with your neighbors and buy it for 10-20k or whatever, improve on it with some bird houses or something....
>>918783
>I pay more in taxes than most people earn in a year,
Sure you Mr. Buffet.
>If a lot comes up for sale, get with your neighbors and buy it for 10-20k
You must live in a GREAT neighborhood if vacant lots can be had for 10k. I live in a pretty average middle class neighborhood and vacant lots are about 70k.
>World never gave me anything.
Sure thing there champ.
"My family was so poor I had to get a job at the age of 4. We never got any welfare either because we were proud white people."
>>916140
Fuck no.
Join your SAE race teams instead. Build race cars that teach you actual engineering instead of shitty homes for poor people.
>>916140
>useful skills
Get a job in a kitchen.
about 10 years ago I was out of work (graphic designer) and I went in person to the local HFH office to see about volunteering on building a house - I have a lot of [non-professional] experience fixing things and remodeling in homes etc. (I was currently fixing up a 100+ year old house so I wasn't a complete know nothing about houses idiot). anyway, it came down to they don't really accept individuals to come in a actually *build* anything - they basically wanted me to go door to door and try to collect money for them. I wasn't interested in that BS so that was that. meanwhile if you work at a company and that company decided to do some volunteer group "team building" activity HFH will accept them, put hammers in their hands and actually let them build (or rather fukk up) the house. nice.
interestingly I got the same BS from the local historical society when I went in and asked them about helping restore one of the historical houses in town. nope, I could only volunteer to work at the gift shop or go door to door collecting money. WTF?
so I said fukk it to both of them and just continued work on my own old house.
>>920416
cont.
and I do, on occasion, find some good old stuff for cheap at the local HFH re-use-it store.
>>916140
Don't get involved with HFH. Its an overfunded
I own about ten properties in an older part of town. Bought them up ahead of the gentrification wave that went through. HFH acquired a commercial unimproved lot that the city rezoned residential and like six more lots in the neighborhood and built up a bunch of houses, 14 of them. Half went to whites, half went to blacks, and there were two mexican families. Six years later the only two houses that aren't disheveled hovels with trash and rotting matresses on the lot are one of the mexican families, and a white single mom who married a construction foreman.
Find out if your city has a men's shelter. They're often horribly underfunded and receive very little in the way of community support. In my city the SIX womens shelters receive a combined 35 times the government funding than the one and only mens shelter despite the city having essentially equal numbers of men and women in need. In fact six years ago we had to fight the city tooth and nail not to close the men's shelter
I coordinate a group of small business owners that help fulfill the needs of the shelter. Buying/donating suits and work clothes, computers, and arranging for on the job training and apprenticeships for the men going through the shelter programs.
Men in need doesn't fit the Left's SJW narrative and our efforts to help these men are outright hindered by so-called "activists" and we experience attempts at villification for daring to help men. When we were fighting to keep the mens shelter open the left was using the sound bite that we were trying to take money from women and children in need.
>>918775
>>920566
Can you be my dad or something..?
>>920566
>despite the city having essentially equal numbers of men and women in need.
Actually, if you look at statistics, men are MORE likely to be homeless.
Women have access to more funding as you said, and basically have the ability to trade ass for housing. I mean good on them for using what they got to keep them off the streets. Men generally don't have this ability though.
Same goes for shit like Breast Cancer. One of the least deadly cancers, statistically, yet it receives more funding than pretty much all other types of cancer combined.
If you want to volunteer and do something hands on, look at energy audits. You go into generally poor housing and old people. You preform some measurements and do some basic upgrades.
I've done it before and since the people have to request it and usually have to pay for part of it, you get people who genuinely want to improve their house.
You can also contact other non-profits and ask if they need any assistance with non-typical tasks. I built some stuff for the local Boys and Girls Club, I called the manager and she said they needed some shelving installed and I built them a few "mini golf holes".
>>916140
After Hurricane Katrina, some church groups brought in a bunch of displaced people to a rural area south of Albuquerque, NM
Habitat got involved, land and materials were donated (they had a Beg-A-Thon, and a Guilt-A-Thon), built 50 homes at the end of a long non-maintained dirt road, nothing else for miles, no schools, stores, nothing, claimed this was the start of a new community
The houses were basic single story stucco boxes, 1 car garages, 3 bedroom, 1 bath, all appliances, A/C and fully furnished, cedar fences, basic landscaping
The home were given to the displaced, mortgage free, property taxes were waved for 5 years and the utility companies provided free water and electricity for 1 year
10 years on, the site is completely abandoned, all the houses are uninhabitable, some burned down, some have fallen down, looks like a an area deserted during wartime
I worked for a company that provided a lot of the materials for free, I was unpaid for my work, not a choice do it or work somewhere else
So I would sometimes visit to how things were going, some families left soon after getting in, stripped the homes and sold everything and left, took windows, doors, wiring, everything, after a year, garage doors were falling down, broken windows, yards turned into abandoned car lots and piled up garbage, one guy was mad about no more free utilities, so he cut a hole in the roof and set up a burn barrel for heat and to cook, he burned most of the fences in the neighborhood
These people got homes, furnished homes for free and just shit and pissed all over them
If you give someone something they do not respect it as much as if they earned it themselves
The local Habitat claims the development failed because of "Racism", that the majority Hispanic community did not "Embrace" the "People of Color" newcomers and that the area still had a long way to go to realize their "Privilege", this area was pretty poor and the Katrina folks were given homes that were nicer
>>921412
fucking niggers. gotta ruin everything
>>921412
Human brain is stupid like that. We put a value on everything in our mind.
>Get a house for free
That house isn't worth much in our minds.
Basically, people suck.
>>921391
>Actually, if you look at statistics, men are MORE likely to be homeless.
Homelessness is only one metric of need, but an important one none-the-less. The study that we commissioned in our city was an assessment of individuals requesting a certain threshold of social services. Counseling, rehab, training, clothing, heating/cooling/energy assistance, housing placement, and outright shelter. Out of all the metrics we measured it came up 50/50. Some metrics were skewed to one sex or the other; homelessness was obviously skewed towards men while battered spouse counseling and temporary housing was predominately women.
>>921412
> I was unpaid for my work, not a choice do it or work somewhere else
This is a direct violation of fair labor practices and labor laws. My old employer tried pulling this bullshit "you're volunteering or looking for a new job". The manager threatened everyone into signing up to volunteer.
>"You paying me for the time?"
>"It's called volunteering and it's mandatory"
>"It's called Wage and Hour Division of the federal government's Department of Labor who oversees the Fair Labor Standards Act 1-800-4-USWAGE"
>picked up my phone and looked her in the eyes
>she walks off
>Two hours later two people from H.R. from the main office (a 90 minute drive away) asked me to join them in the office apologizing profusely and practically begging me not to call wage and hour.
Protip: Anyone who runs a business shits fear in the face of wage an hour because the employer is assumed guilty until proven innocent when it comes to wages and claims. So unless you run an iron clad ship and stringently enforce wage and labor laws on your employees, and keep perfectly accurate records, you as an employer are fucked whenever they come in to investigate a claim.
In the business I own now I've written up employees for working as little as 2 minutes off the clock, and outright terminated managers who even imply that it's "ok"
HfH is a very local organization, meaning that your local cities administration has almost autonomous control over how to deploy and what properties to buy/build. I think the mission is very strong, and volunteer to help with backoffice and financial counseling. Its really serious business what you have to do to qualify for a HfH home. if you can jump through those hoops, there is a very strong chance you will make it, till you end up having more kids. *sigh* but i believe in the mission.
i was also frusterated, when i showed up to help with a house, i brought a 60 gallon compressor and two framing nailers and they told me not to take it out of my truck. Apperently in my city, there are the 'professional construction' houses where tradesmen can build, but most projects with walkons are not setup for someone who can frame with an air nailer.
>>922317
This. The idea is good and Jimmy Carter is a saint of a man (terrible president, but a wonderful person) but there is room for a LOT of improvement.
>>921544
>In the business I own now I've written up employees for working as little as 2 minutes off the clock, and outright terminated managers who even imply that it's "ok"
I've run into this issue a lot too. What sucks is that the ones who do it are the old guys who take their job very seriously or the young guys who want to impress.
The old guys will stay late and get shit setup for the next day or maintain tools. The young guys will usually start cleaning up or start working on tomorrow's work.
Some get really offended when I tell them they need to go home. They just don't grasp that I can get in trouble and fined majorly because they're trying to be nice. Their response is always "Don't worry about it, I'm not going to tell anyone."
>>922366
>Some get really offended when I tell them they need to go home. They just don't grasp that I can get in trouble and fined majorly because they're trying to be nice. Their response is always "Don't worry about it, I'm not going to tell anyone."
One of the small business owners in my group had an honest "oops" when it came to wage and hours worked. Instead of talking to the guy, the employee went to wage and hour. He of course fixed it immediately as soon as he was made aware of it, but was still assessed $10,000 in fines by wage and hour for a $500 mistake.
I tell me guys straight up "I'm paying you for the time you work. If you do work for me, you're getting paid for it. You don't work off the clock because it isn't fair to you that I get free labor. The same way I didn't work for free when starting this company. It's the law, its my rules, and most importantly its fair to you." After that they tend to get it.
The young guys are impressionable enough that they'll take a hint. But the old timers let it go through one ear and out the other. I'll tell them that and its like a wink and a nod "sure thing boss, I hear you *wink wink*"
>>916140
Join ASME, American Society of Mechanical Engineers. Fun, and they do projects, and sometimes get speakers from big companies.
>>922317
Around me they have too many houses available and too few applicants. It's because theit stipulations make it impossible to be qualified. Also I was reading through the application process and it said you only get to live there for two years, you don't keep the house. What the hell is that. Not worth going through a six month application process for 2 years of "free" rent. You also have to consent to all their PR shit.
To me it's just another charity that loves getting donations but doesn't actually help people.
H4H is great if you want to volunteer to feel good about yourself, then wait in line for months.
