There are normally numerous ways to volunteer to advance the Habitat for Humanity of Greater Dayton’s mission. However, in the past year, thanks to a global pandemic, those ways have been limited. But that didn’t stop Springfield High School junior Michael Collier from helping out.

As a project for his Creative Action Service class, which teaches community engagement, Collier set out to create “buckets of help” to give to Springfield-based partners families. The buckets were full of household living items like kitchen and bathroom towels, cleansers, liquid hand soap, wipes, air fresheners, garbage bags, clothes hangers, kitchen utensils, foil and assorted toiletries.

“I wanted to do something to help out during the global pandemic, especially since it is making it harder to get things that they need,” Michael said. “I collected donations from my school. And I worked with my parents to get a grant to help buy some of the things.”

His mother is Kristen Collier, Director of Community Service at Wittenberg University, and helped her son secure a Thrivent Financial grant to purchase some of the items. She has worked with our affiliate for years in coordinating university service projects. In fact, Michael was exposed to the power of community service when he was younger as he traveled with his mom and the campus chapter on one of its annual Spring Break service trips.

“I had a couple of different ideas, but this one seemed like the easiest to do with the pandemic going on,” he said. “Everything had to meet all the COVID guidelines. I was glad I could help.”

If you would like to volunteer to help with habitat’s mission in Clark County, go to www.daytonhabitat.org or call us at (937) 325-2514 Mondays through Fridays between 9 a.m.-3 p.m. In fact, April is volunteer month and it would be a blessing to have you on board ASAP so you can participate in that.