When Lori Davis’s roof began to cave in last year, she asked her hometown church for help. She got bids for the project, and the church agreed to pay a contractor. He dropped off supplies, but she never heard back after that. She was left with a pile of shingles and a roof that still sagged.
That was until WorkcampNE, a faith-based nonprofit summer camp to repair homes for low-income residents, visited her neighbor’s house as a potential work site. She sent them down the street to talk to Davis as well.
This month, five students spent a week repairing Davis’s roof – stripping off the old roof, putting a new ice and water shield down and replacing the shingles.
“If it wasn’t for these guys, I was probably going to end up having to sell my home,” said Davis.
In a town known for its million-dollar vacation homes and lakeside properties, Davis lives down a dirt road in the Meredith Center Cooperative, a neighborhood of manufactured homes. After surgeries spurred by rheumatoid arthritis, Davis retired. Now, she lives off $1,000 a month of Social Security Disability Insurance payments.
“I don’t have extra money after bills every month,” she said. “There’s not enough programs out there for seniors.”
While WorkcampNE students fixed her roof, another crew rebuilt two sets of stairs for Davis’s neighbor, Catherine Keets.
Keets and Davis were two of 16 projects that 155 campers completed in the Franklin area.
Since 2003, Litchfield residents Marcia and Ken Therrien have overseen WorkcampNE. The program works to help low-income residents with housing projects, while providing students the chance to learn new skills and serve a community.
“Our main focus is keeping people warm or safer, drier in their own homes,” said Marcia. “[We] get kids out there to learn to serve. They learn the building trades, so we want them to give back.”
This summer, they are spending five weeks across Manchester, Franklin and Epping. Some students stay for one week, others join for all five. Each week the crews complete new projects.
Project locations are based on need, said Marcia, along with a willingness from town welfare offices and schools to partner with the organization. WorkcampNE organizes all of the building permits and materials. There is no cost to residents, only their consent to allow teenagers to work on their homes.
For two weeks, students stayed in the Franklin Middle School, with desks pushed aside in math classrooms and sleeping bags spread out. Each day they filed out to work sites, with five students and an adult crew leader working on each project.
This summer is Gary Campbell’s seventh time participating in WorkcampNE. He started with painting projects. For a few summers, he helped build decks. Now, as a college student at Southern Connecticut State University, Campbell was helping site leader Eric Moore direct campers on Davis’s roofing project.
“It’s always been an awesome experience,” he said. “The atmosphere of everyone being together for such a great purpose as well as we are all called to go out and serve others and this is a great opportunity to do that.”
For other campers, like 11-year-old Caleb Carminito, it is their first time participating.
“I’ve never built stairs before,” he said. “When I first came to the site I never thought we were going to be able to accomplish something that good.”
Before Carminito and others began working on Keet’s house, she used three cinder blocks as makeshift steps into the back of her home.
In working on her home, the WorkcampNE team bonded with Keets. They learned that Keets’s son Joel likes to play music, and that she loves motorcycles and used to play numerous sports.
At Davis’s house, crew members met her dogs – two Chihuahuas and two Australian shepherds.
“My animals keep me going,” she said. “All my animals except for one are rescues. They deserve a fair home.”
Now Davis is Facebook friends with Campbell and other crew members. The team gave her a framed photo of them and a signed Bible as well.
Next WorkcampNE will spend a week in Epping before the final week of the program in Manchester.
“They are absolutely amazing. They are a Godsend,” said Davis. “They’re going to go far in this life. And I am going to miss them.”