Students, teachers and families crowded around an empty lot at 815 W. Comstock Avenue, Winter Park to watch the groundbreaking for the Winter Park-Maitland Habitat for Humanity Affiliate’s 55th house on Sept. 15.
The families receiving the houses were announced around the middle of the building process for most of the previous Habitat houses. However, the receiving family was announced at the groundbreaking this year. The house was assigned to Tiana Thomas, Buchanan Maldonado and their daughter Kyle.
“[I’m] very excited,” Thomas said. “I thought I was going to cry. I was not expecting them to make an announcement.”
A family must volunteer for at least 100 hours on other housing projects before they can be assigned a house, and 500 hours of volunteering to replace a conventional down payment. Over the past four years, the Buchanans committed more than 300 hours to volunteering at previous Habitat houses.
The Winter Park-Maitland Habitat for Humanity Affiliate started 25 years ago and their partnership with Trinity began five years later. The relationship has given students a way to be involved in their community while also directly showing students the difference they are making in others’ lives.
“Once the students see the change that they’re making in families’ lives, how they’re changing the complexion of the community … having fun themselves, and interacting with students and teachers on a different basis other than school basis, that just makes a winning combination,” Habitat for Humanity of Winter Park-Maitland President Hal George said.
Senior Alexandra Grossman, the president of the Trinity Habitat for Humanity Chapter, volunteered for a few community service projects prior to her involvement in the chapter, but didn’t find them fulfilling enough. She started volunteering at Habitat for Humanity in her ninth-grade year and said she immediately fell in love with it.
“It’s just brought me a greater sense of community, and it’s opened a lot of opportunities,” Grossman said.
Trinity has been involved with Habitat for Humanity for 20 years. Students devote a couple hours of their day to helping families in their community each Saturday morning. Over the past 20 years, Trinity has dedicated more than 50,000 hours to building houses with the affiliate. In honor of Trinity’s 50th anniversary, Habitat for Humanity decided to name this year’s Habitat house the Trinity House.
“It speaks volumes to the commitment that Trinity has made as a school to the community that we are in [and] also to the larger community of community service … through all their community service projects, not just Habitat,” George said. “I think it is just an absolute huge statement as to the quality of the school and the students.”
