September 30, 2010

The Albemarle Housing Improvement Project lends a helping hand wherever needed and helps to build a stronger community.

The program provides assistance in a variety of tasks, which include fixing crumbling roofs, broken decks, and leaky pipes.

AHIP's Executive Director Jennifer Jacobs adds, "If people leave emergency repairs unaddressed what happens is that turns into big maintenance issues years down the road."

Clients for the program range from elderly people living on fixed incomes to young families who are struggling to make ends meet.

Jacobs notes, "They're the ones who are working in the hospitals you visit, that are taking care of your parents at a nursing home, that are driving the bus you're kids ride to school; these are the people we're serving and we see them everyday, but we don't tend to drive by and look at their houses. You look around and don't see the pockets of need, your liable to think, well everybody lives the way I do, and everybody doesn't."

The programs 21 person staff is in need of many volunteers. Charlottesville's Olivet Presbyterian Church helps provide some assistance.

Greg Govan, an AHIP volunteer, says "Vocation is an important word to Presbyterians, it's a calling. Your great passion and the worlds great need meet. Housing is one of those great needs and it's a need everybody understands."

Govan adds that volunteering gives members of his church the chance to be better Presbyterians and better people.

Albemarle Housing Improvement Project honored Greg Govan and the Olivet Presbyterian Church on Thursday at their annual house party.