FORT SMITH — Drivers on Garrison Avenue in Fort Smith were surprised March 16 to see a new development being built. Industrious teens were building homes out of cardboard boxes to raise funds for Arkansas Valley Habitat for Humanity and demonstrate how some poor people live.
To raise awareness, Habitat for Humanity teamed up with 11 teenagers and young adults from the River Valley Life Teen, the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith Catholic Campus Ministry and St. Paul United Methodist Church youth group to sponsor its first Shantytown Project.
Kristyn Willis, a Life Teen member from St. Boniface Church, chaired the project to earn her Girl Scout Gold Award.
“Kristyn was responsible for designing the flyer, recruiting teens to participate, organizing activities, and getting meal sponsors,” said Jay Poppe, Arkansas Valley Habitat for Humanity’s executive director and member of Sacred Heart of Mary Church in Barling.
Since its opening in 1989, Habitat for Humanity has built 59 homes for needy families in the River Valley area. But the need for affordable housing is much greater, Poppe said. Only 24 percent of the affordable housing need is met by available housing and 50 percent of low-income families live in inadequate housing.
Habitat for Humanity found “box sponsors” and, on the first day of Spring Break, teens and college students made cardboard box shelters at Harwood Park. Despite their efforts to add whimsical elements to the construction — cardboard swimming pools and chimneys — they soon learned that chimneys without fireplaces don’t provide any warmth, and swimming pools without water aren’t any fun.
Life Teen, based at Immaculate Conception Church in Fort Smith, provided a simple meal of soup and vegetables for the workers, who set out to have some fun without electricity, television, computers, video games or iPods. They sledded on the grass with leftover cardboard, danced over and under the limbo stick, maneuvered an obstacle course while tied together with rope and built self-supported structures from newspaper. The team with the best-built shanty won a highly coveted prize: cots for the night. Everyone else slept on pieces of cardboard.
“For a lot of the teens, it wasn’t until after they had slept in a box that they were able to identify with the homeless,” youth minister Jeremy Lepper said. “If you asked them whether they thought they’d have fun, they said, ’Oh, yeah, this is a blast,’ but the actual experience of sleeping on the cold, hard ground really opened their eyes to what it would be like to do it year after year, day after day.”
Each participant raised at least $25 in pledges to participate in Shantytown, with the proceeds going to Habitat for Humanity. Teens hoped the television and newspaper coverage their project received would encourage others to contribute as well.
“Shantytown taught me that inadequate housing exists not only in a big city like New York but also in cities such as Fort Smith,” Willis, a Northside High School senior, said. “I’ve also learned that you don’t have to be an adult to help people.”
Habitat for Humanity, the ecumenical homebuilding ministry founded on “sweat equity,” volunteerism and no-interest mortgages, found a perfect match in the hardworking volunteer teens.
Poppe hopes Fort Smith’s first Shantytown Project will become an annual event, with more and more youth participating each year, from school organizations as well as church groups.
“The good news is that Life Teen really stepped up and got enough teens together to form two of the four participating teams,” he said.
To learn how to get involved in Habitat for Humanity’s ministry, call (479) 782-8255 between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m., Monday through Thursday.
