Tue, Jan. 16, 2007

Interfaith project entices students to lend a big hand

Community food pantry coming

BY JENNIFER A. BOWEN
News-Democrat

In the cold and the dust and among the piles of broken plaster, wood and scraps of aged carpet, teens from many faiths worked together to build a community food pantry and forge new friendships, and hopefully, new understanding.

"We are getting to know one another and we are breaking down the walls of misunderstanding," the Rev. Doug Cripe said. "In doing so, we are hopefully taking a small step towards local and world peace."

Twenty-two teens and adults from Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim and Baha'i faiths swung sledgehammers, pulled down walls with crowbars and swept up piles of plaster dust Monday morning during a rehabilitation project at 205 W. B St. in Belleville.

The Martin Luther King Jr. Day project was sponsored by Neighbors for Renewal and the teens volunteered through the service arm of the Metro-East Interfaith Partnership, Faith Beyond Walls. The organizations are working to turn the previously abandoned brick home into a large, nonprofit food pantry.

Christy Wafer, 16, a student at Belleville West High School and a member of the Crossroads Christian Church in Caseyville, and Nipun Gupta, 16, a student at the O'Fallon High School and a member of the Hindu Temple of St. Louis, worked side by side, dumping broken sections of wall, chunks of plaster and wall-papered boards into a construction debris bin.

The two met while hauling trash out of the house.

"My main reason for doing this is because of Faith Beyond Walls," Gupta said. "It helps build understanding and it's important to understand each other and understand each other's beliefs."

Wafer agreed, adding the food pantry project is the second time she has done youth volunteer work with the Metro-East Interfaith Partnership.

"I like to help people out," she said.

After several hours of working on the house, the teens and their adult sponsors met over lunch to talk about the differences and similarities between faiths, discussed sacred texts for the different religions and shared with each other the different ways each spent their December holidays, said Cripe, of the Metro-East Interfaith Partnership and pastor at the Crossroads Christian Church in Caseyville.

The food pantry is expected to be complete sometime this summer and is intended to serve needy people throughout the community, said the Rev. Drew Kramer, president of Neighbors for Renewal and pastor of St. Paul United Church of Christ in Belleville.

The food pantry, tentatively named the Belleville Consolidated Food Pantry, will be a nonprofit organization sponsored by local churches.

"We'll keep inviting more and more churches in the area to partner with us to sponsor the food pantry," Kramer said.

A second Neighbors for Renewal project is in the works next to the future food pantry. The organization is working to convert a house into a transitional off-campus learning center for developmentally disabled high school students from Belleville District 201, Kramer said.

Contact reporter Jennifer A. Bowen at jbowen@bnd.com or 239-2667.

September 18, 2006

Neighbors for Renewal tackle downtown project

BY SCOTT WUERZ
News-Democrat
 

Unsatisfied with doing one home at a time, a charitable group that rehabs dilapidated Belleville houses and sells them to low-income families is tackling an entire corner of older buildings downtown.

As he helped unload a truck of donated landscaping bricks, Neighbors for Renewal President Drew Kramer said the group is rehabbing a trio of houses at the corner of B and Second streets.

One of the project houses will be sold as a single-family home, Kramer said. The second is expected to become a food pantry operated jointly by local churches, and the group is negotiating with Belleville Township High School District 201 over the third to create an off-campus training program to aid developmentally disabled students.

"We feel like we have made a lot of difference in community neighborhoods by fixing up the houses we've done," Kramer said. "But we've never had the impact that we'll get from fixing up an entire corner. This is going to be a vast improvement over what was here."

The houses will be the ninth, 10th and 11th the group has restored in the past five years. The single-family house will be finished first, with completion expected in November. The others should be ready by mid-2007.

Labor for the project Saturday was provided by teenagers from Faith Beyond Walls and the Metro-East Interfaith Partnership.

Karen Ruiz, a 17-year-old Belleville resident, said she didn't mind giving up one of the last Saturdays of the summer to work in a dusty construction zone.

"I've always wanted to be able to do something like this," Ruiz said. "To be able to make a difference for somebody and in the neighborhood seemed like a neat thing to do."

The single-family house, which was built in the 1880s, has been stripped of its aging siding to expose the brickwork beneath. An addition has been built onto the back of the structure to give the three-bedroom, two-bathroom house about 1,600 square feet of living space.

All three homes were owned by St. Paul Church. Kramer said without donated property and volunteer labor, it wouldn't be financially feasible to rehab houses that the group repairs.

Kramer said applications to purchase the Neighbors for Renewal house for $65,000 are being accepted until Sept. 30. Interested buyers must be preapproved for a loan and meet Neighbors for Renewal's other requirements. For more information or to get an applications, call Kramer at 233-3303.

Also Saturday, Habitat for Humanity broke ground on a rehab project at 504 N. 50th St. in East St. Louis. To volunteer for the East St. Louis project or to learn more about it, call the Habitat for Humanity office at 271-1215.

Contact reporter Scott Wuerz at swuerz@bnd.com or 239-2626.