About Us
AMERICORPS WORKER BUILDS HOMES FOR LOW-INCOME FAMILIES
MEGAN FRENCH, CLASS OF 2008
About six months after Hurricane Ivan devastated several areas around the Gulf of Mexico in September 2004, Megan and a group of Lake Forest students on a spring break community service trip arrived in Foley, Alabama to help build homes with Habitat for Humanity. Megan had hardly hammered a nail let alone built a house, but she had a transformative experience in Foley. She even refused to leave until every last piece of vinyl siding was in place, despite cries from her classmates to get on the bus for the 15-hour drive back to Lake Forest. “This is what it’s all about,” she says. “It’s about making a difference in someone’s life.”
|
Lake Forest College offers community service opportunities that lead to careers helping others.
|
After returning, Megan formed a Habitat for Humanity chapter on campus with Kate Otto ’08 and several students from the trip. They went on “build days” around the North Shore, held events to promote awareness, and raised funds to help pay for the annual spring break trips. In 2006 Megan felt so strongly about the work done by the organization that she planned an additional service trip during winter break, from submitting the necessary paperwork to taking on a leadership role on the trip.
Throughout college she went on six service trips to build homes in Alabama, New Orleans, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina. She also interned with the Lake County Habitat for Humanity affiliate, where she helped manage the Web site and served on the committee that selects who got a home.
After graduation, Megan returned to the Foley area — the site of her first service trip — as an AmeriCorps volunteer with the Habitat for Humanity chapter of Baldwin County, where she writes grants and started a program to get youth from age 5 to 25 involved in funding and building a Habitat for Humanity house. “I saw tremendous opportunity for working with Habitat for Humanity when I was a first year college student on my first service trip, and really want to give students in the community I live in that same opportunity,” she says.