Volunteer Spotlights

In honor of National Volunteer Week, we interviewed volunteer family Faith and Ken Hyer to find out what they enjoyed most about volunteering with Habitat Wake. Ken is Faith's uncle and they've been involved with builds for several years. Here's what they had to say:

Terry and Kathie Vermouth began volunteering with Habitat Wake almost a year ago, but their work with Habitat for Humanity goes back 10 years. The Vermouths were introduced to Habitat Wake by their daughter-in-law, who worked for Habitat for Humanity International. Originally from Massachusetts, Terry and Kathie work as House Leaders on construction sites four to five days out of the week. “Things are a lot different here than they were in Massachusetts,” recalls Kathie. “We had to shovel snow before we could build a house.”

Our family selection committee plays a critical and rewarding role of accepting future Habitat Wake homeowners into our program. Kenisha Hinton, a program manager with Wake County Department of Human Services, has served as a committee member for more than a year. After hearing about a family in her church who was building with Habitat Wake and learning about the family selection committee from a friend, Kenisha joined.

Ken Hyer began volunteering with Habitat Wake nearly four years ago when he and a team of fellow Cisco employees came out to help build a home. Ken enjoyed the process so much that he joined us on the build site a couple more times. Before he knew it, he was volunteering with Habitat Wake every Saturday.

“After hearing the enthusiastic description of youth mission trips this last Sunday, I’ve convinced myself I’ve been on a mission trip, without the youth part. On Saturday I drove over to the Habitat project on Martin Street at 8 in the morning and volunteered. Eventually there were around 25 people gathered to work together on the project house.

For Amy and Joel Huenaman, volunteering with Habitat Wake is entirely different from their first time, two decades ago.

“Our first time volunteering we were in Cary and we spent most of our time in ‘stand around mode’ trying to figure out what to do, says Joel. “Now that we are more experienced we need less direction; we are able to take more initiative”

The industrious couple first learned about Habitat for Humanity through their church, Kirk of Kildaire Presbyterian. Now Amy and Joel have regularly worked as volunteers for 2 years.

Lisa Hughet spent more than two decades conducting corporate and sales training for a large technology company and a multi-national pharmaceutical company. Now she spends her free time training Habitat volunteers to swing a hammer and use a caulk gun.

 When Twanna Jackson walks through her neighborhood and finds herself curious about the interior layout of a neighbor’s house, she doesn’t need to knock on their door and ask to be invited inside.  In many cases she already knows the house ‘inside out’ from having helped build it as a Habitat volunteer.