Symmes Township, Ohio – Affordable housing is the number one issue for people experiencing homelessness. The search for safe and quality housing is a tremendous stress to low income working families right here in our city.
This fact is one which has compelled over 200 CHCA students, faculty, staff, and parents (led by 23 student leaders) to partner with Help Build Hope to build the walls of a new house, using only a hammer and nails, in CHCA’s school parking lot. The build took place on April 11, from 8 AM – 3:30 PM at 8283 East Kemper Road in Symmes Township. The home was then loaded onto a flatbed by students the next day, and was then transported to Walnut Hills that afternoon. The house was sold to a low income family in urban Cincinnati through the non-profit, Discover Jubilee.
Throughout this process, the student leadership team planned for food, social media, music, and leading teams of 5-8 of their peers to build the walls. Classrooms were also engaged by discussing affordable housing and poverty issues.
Karen Hordinski said, “We were incredibly excited to help end the cycle of poverty and provide a home for a low income working family in Cincinnati!”
CHCA’s Student Organized Service (SOS) Director Karen Hordinski said, “We were incredibly excited to help end the cycle of poverty and provide a home for a low income working family in Cincinnati!”
This event was all made possible by CHCA’s Teacher Innovation Fund, an initiative that empowers teachers to inspire innovation and engagement among students. Teachers are moving from the role of mostly delivering content to facilitators of engagement, creativity, collaboration, problem solving, and enlightenment. At CHCA, teachers are embracing this shift and the Teacher Innovation Fund is serving as an accelerator.
15th Annual Plant Sale at the Loveland Primary & Elementary Schools
An interesting perspective:
“We were incredibly excited to help end the cycle of poverty and provide a home for a low income working family in Cincinnati!”
If the US still had its 1950s-1960s manufacturing base intact, many of today’s low income working families could afford their own housing and might not need charity. Ironically, some of the upper-middle-class students who attend CHCA are children of parents working for corporations that have increased their profits by moving manufacturing from the US to cheap labor sources in foreign lands.