With Spring and warm weather being right around the corner, the Mercyhurst Habitat for Humanity chapter is holding their Rent-a-Habitater once again. 

For those who have not heard of this event before, it is a fundraiser for the club where students will go out and volunteer for faculty and staff of the University at their house.  

Typically, the students who are volunteering will be painting, raking leaves, gardening, or doing other work around the house for whoever wants/needs the help.  

“Some months we receive more traffic from professors than other months. Although, we try to offer as many opportunities as possible! In order to find out about these opportunities, students should join the club’s email list and organization on Laker Launchpad,” said Ashley Kreeger, secretary for Habitat for Humanity club. 

This year, the club is offering more opportunities for students to volunteer.  

“We try to offer multiple weekends for students to volunteer. This semester we added many more weekends trying to have one every weekend that does not fall on a break,” said Abigail Springer, Habitat for Humanity President.  

Service is a huge part of the Sisters of Mercy as they took a fourth vow of service when they became a sisterhood in 1831 and that has carried down through generations to Mercyhurst today.  

Most students who attend Mercyhurst complete some type of service on their own time, and getting involved with Habitat for Humanity is a great way to give back to the community.

“Habitat for Humanity’s ultimate goal for Rent-a-Habitater is to allow interested students to engage in the community beyond the gates. With this opportunity, students are able to go professors’ homes to work on projects or tasks as directed,” Kreeger said. 

This is a great fundraiser for the club as the money goes toward the club’s spring break trip. Every year, Habitat for Humanity will take a trip somewhere and spend the week building houses.  

The past two years, the trip has been canceled due to COVID-19, but the club is optimistic that next year there will be a trip.  

This year, the club had already picked a location for the Spring Break trip before COVID-19 canceled the trip for the second year in a row. This year students were supposed to travel to Kentucky to volunteer and build houses. 

During the last two trips students traveled to were to Monroe, North Carolina in 2018, and in 2019 to Alabama. These service trips are a great representative of how the Sisters of Mercy’s mission is still being practiced to this day. 

The money raised from Rent-a-Habitator both in the fall and spring semesters goes toward offsetting costs for the spring break trip for students who wish to attend. 

If there are any faculty or staff that want to request volunteers, they can reach out to Erin Smith, Rent-a-Habitater Coordinator, or use the link that was sent out in The Morning Tide on March 24. 

If you are a student who wants to volunteer, you can reach out to Erin Smith or Abigail Springer.