New Homes, Courtesy of Lowell

The Lowell House community—already the second largest on campus—is about to become 22 units bigger.

After nearly a year of planning, Lowell House kicked off a groundbreaking partnership with Harvard Habitat for Humanity last weekend, sending 10 undergraduate volunteers to build affordable apartments in an effort to revitalize the local community in Dorchester, Mass.

Lowell is the first House to form such a partnership with a Phillips Brooks House Association (PBHA) community service organization.

And this is only the beginning of the project, as volunteers plan to spend three more weekends this semester and four next fall working in Dorchester at the Arrowhead site, named after its triangular shape.

Lowell volunteers will again venture to the site tomorrow and Sunday to continue construction on 22 units of low-income housing, a commercial area and a public playground.

The House has also committed to host a slew of fundraisers for the project. In accordance with national Habitat guidelines, each project partner must donate a certain amount—Lowell will raise $20,000 while Harvard Habitat and Boston Habitat will donate $10,000 each. Members of Lowell have already started fundraising, drawing $3,000 in a date auction held last Saturday night.

Lowell House Committee (HoCo) co-chair and project volunteer coordinator Stephanie L. Safdi ’05 says this partnership aims to foster House community.

“We’re bringing together everybody in Lowell House on some sort of level, whether it’s helping to build a house or coming to one of our fundraisers,” says Safdi. “We’re hoping if it’s successful, it can be modeled at other Houses as well.”

IF I HAD A HAMMER

Engaging other Lowell residents outside the project’s core planning group will be a major challenge, says Nadia L. Oussayef ’06, a volunteer coordinator.

“It’s great to have a few people dedicated to the project, but we need more than that. We need the whole House to get involved,” says Oussayef, who is also a Crimson editor.

Oussayef admits that last weekend’s turnout was “a little sparse.”

Lowell and Harvard Habitat can send a maximum of 21 volunteers any given day—with the goal being that the House sends two-thirds of the workers. Last Saturday, Lowell only sent 10 volunteers to the site and on Sunday, it canceled its trip.

Oussayef and other organizers say they hope the experiences of the volunteers that did attend will spark interest in the project.

“It was great. Getting away on a Saturday morning for a cause and having such different people come together and accomplish what we did is very gratifying,” Janice C. Jun ’06 says.

Saturday’s 10 inaugural volunteers enthusiastically took on their jobs at the worksite—sawing plywood, nailing up wood siding, applying weather strips to windows and landscaping with shovels and rakes.

“Usually when I do Habitat, it’s at the later stages and you just grab a paint brush and it’s really easy. But here it’s complex stuff—people are using power tools—and y’all are handling it very well,” PBHA Executive Director Gene A. Corbin told the students during a lunch break.

The hands-on approach turned out to be more than the planners bargained for after this reporter cut himself with a circular saw. While the injury turned out to be minor, Safdi says that power tools will likely be off-limits to participants in the future for safety and liability concerns.

Tomorrow, the planners expect a temporary influx of help when the nonsenior members of the men’s varsity soccer team will join volunteers at the site as part of team’s annual tradition of spending a day devoted to community service.

In addition to attracting students, organizers also hope to involve other members of the Lowell community.

Harvard Divinity School Assistant Dean for Student Life Belva B. Jordan says she and fellow Lowell Senior Common Room (SCR) member Emily H. Moss, who is also an associate of the anthropology department, hope to spread the word about the project.

“My sense is that as they hear about it, more Senior Common Room members will become interested,” says Jordan, who plans to work at the site and make a donation. “If you’ve got two of us at least who are talking it up at the beginning, then maybe that’s the start of something.”

Even the heads of the Lowell community seem enthused by the partnership.

“[Co-Master Dorothy A. Austin and I] are very excited about it and hope to wield a hammer one weekend ourselves,” Lowell Master Diana L. Eck writes in an e-mail.

SHOW ME THE MONEY

Wielding a hammer and other manual labor is only one facet of the House’s obligation.

In order to work on a Habitat site, a group must commit to fundraising for construction. Lowell thus faces the daunting task of generating $20,000 for the Arrowhead site by the end of next fall.

“It’s definitely achievable. We raise more than $20,000 each year,” says Jordan W. Thomas ’04, a former director of the Harvard Habitat board. “But it will take commitment.”

Thomas adds that in his experience, while people tend to get excited at the worksite, channeling that energy towards the less glamorous task of fundraising is “the difficulty” of community service projects.

According to Safdi, organizers hope to raise $5,000 towards the project this spring and the remaining $15,000 in the fall—a goal they are well on their way to reaching with last weekend’s date auction earnings.

Last Saturday, organizers auctioned off 23 students, who each offered to go on a date with the highest bidder, and raised $3,000—more than half of their spring fundraising goal.

The success of event—which attracted 200 students—surprised even Lowell planners.

“I really was not concerned with the money. I wanted it to be a fun way to get the word out,” says Lauren H. Fifield ’06, who spearheaded the date auction. “It was so much more than we had hoped for.”

Fifield entered the auction herself and her decision literally paid off. She raked in $105 after stripping down to the lingerie and pillow fighting on stage with Annie R. Shawn ’07, who herself raised $220.

Emcee Will Luera, a member of Improv Boston, says he thought that antics of the auction participants helped entice the crowd to spend freely, noting the pillow fighting, the cowgirl dance of Emily F. Stevens ’05 and Kimberly A. Gould ’05, and the Zoolander-esque walk-off between Zachary A. Corker ’04 and Iain D. M. Bridges ’04.

“The date auction itself brings out great energy. Combine that with a great cause, and it makes contributing much easier,” says Luera. “It was easy to ride the momentum.”

Many of the bids came from the Lowell organizers themselves.

But Catherine C. “Casey” Roche ’06, the highest-selling individual at $285, says she did not mind this outcome.

“It’s a great thing. It shows their dedication to the project. If it takes a few people in between to get the price up, all the better if it’s going towards building people’s houses,” Roche says.

According to project chairs, another upcoming fundraiser will be a letter-writing party, which is planned for early May. Each attendee will have to solicit at least four potential donors to the Habitat project. A free slice of pizza will be given out for each contact.

A SCALE MODEL

While the Lowell organizers are focused on generating in-House support, they are also hopeful about the impact of this partnership on the larger Harvard community.

Corbin, who is also a Lowell SCR member, seems to welcome the challenge of setting an example for the other Houses, indicating that other PBHA service groups could establish similar partnerships with the Houses.

“I think Houses sometimes struggle with the desire to do a House-based public service project while realizing that there are numerous, ongoing public service groups on campus,” Corbin says. “This partnership between Lowell House and Harvard Habitat seems to me to be a good model of how Houses can become involved in a project that supports an ongoing effort.”

Adams House Master Judith S. Palfrey, for one, says that the level of success of the Lowell project could influence whether her own House will pursue such an activity.

“As Masters, we are interested in exploring a larger House involvement,” Palfrey writes in an e-mail. “We are very excited to hear what Lowell House is doing and eager to learn from them how they plan to proceed with fundraising...If there is student enthusiasm for this project, we will be most interested in pursuing it further.”

And Thomas says that Harvard Habitat would like to see Lowell organizers’ excitement spill over to the other Houses.

“We’d love to see this extend to other Houses and have community service be almost like a competition. There’s an element of House spirit that can come into a fundraising project,” says Thomas, a Quincy resident.

Ultimately, says the partnership’s fundraising coordinator John C. Passanese ’06, success will be measured by increasing the awareness of community service among participants.

“To achieve what we want to—to raise $20,000 and to get the involvement—that’s going to take participation on everyone’s part to do that,” says Passanese, who was tapped for the project in part because he owns and runs a landscaping business in his hometown of Buffalo, N.Y.

“If we didn’t raise a dime but showed people an example of what they can do to benefit the community and the world, then we’ve done our job,” says Passanese.

—Staff writer Alan J. Tabak can be reached at tabak@fas.harvard.edu.