[PHOTOSTORY 5: STRUGGLE] Habitat for Humanity

 By: Vanessa Alcala

The Habitat for Humanity of Bulloch County organization is open to volunteers helping to build homes for those in need throughout the community. Off Henry Road, three houses are under construction for residents.

Aaron Marcinkevich is the construction manager for Habitat for Humanity. He leads a group of volunteers to work on the houses. 

The interior of the houses are packed with construction tools, floor coverings and paint ready for the team to use. The items are supplied through donations and a yearly budget.

Marcinkevich looks through his tool chest, trying to find something to assist one of his volunteers. They are preparing to hang a light fixture in the bathroom.

A volunteer, Cole Langford, begins to configure the wires to hang the lights. These lights are going to hang above the mirror in the bathroom.

On the kitchen countertop, two paint buckets sit with paintbrushes in them. The paint job on the interior of the homes was complete.

Inside the third home, one of the bedrooms is filled with boxes of appliances, waiting to be installed. This is one of the last steps of the process.

Marcinkevich uses a tape measure to mark the spots for the doorknobs on the closet. While he does this, he talks to the volunteers, making sure they understand the calculations he used to find the best spots. 

Brady Ninowski looks through the drill kit, trying to find the right one for the job. He was the one in charge of drilling the holes in the doors. 

Maintaining his focus, Ninowski begins to drill into the closet. There will be a round doorknob on each of the panels.

The light helps Ninowski guide the drill into the panel. To make sure the doorknob is secure, it has to be a very precise movement.

Moving to another panel, Ninowski repeats the drilling motion. While he does this, the other volunteers look for other things that could be worked on.

After Ninowski finishes drilling the holes, Jamin Minyon, another volunteer, begins to screw the first doorknob into place. 

In the backyard of the third house, there is a Habitat for Humanity trailer parked in the grass. This trailer is used for storage.

Ninowski sits in the closet area, watching as Marcinkevich helps put something in place with one of the closet door panels.

After taking a look at the door, Marcinkevich looks for a screw to help with the task. While the volunteers worked, Marcinkevich spoke with them about their lives and helped educate them about the projects.

Ninowski places the electric drills on the ground before moving on to help Minyon screw in the rest of the doorknobs.

Marcinkevich leans in to check the doorknobs after the volunteers placed them. He goes in behind their work to make sure they did the job well.

In between the two houses under construction, there is a completed home with residents who recently moved in. One of the residents uses a wheelchair, so there is a construction crew coming in the coming days to install a ramp for easier access to the driveway.

[PHOTOSTORY 5: STRUGGLE] The Button

 By: Rayne Deese

Liz Corbett, founder of the local non-profit organization, The Button, sits in her office to analyze all that needs to be done. The Button collects and discreetly delivers hygiene items to local schools for families that can't afford them within the community. 

The place where the magic happens. Liz Corbett knew The Button needed a bigger place because of all of the items, so she rents out a part of The Boys and Girls Club in Statesboro to be the head office space. 

The displayed flyer that fully explains what the Button does for the community. This flyer also mentions ways that people can become involved. 

Images that show how The Button first got started. Liz Corbett began collecting items in her home kitchen back in 2022, and then the impact began to grow. 

The disorganized pile of hygiene items still needed to be put into their correct location. Volunteers are always needed so that organization can take place for all of the items collected. 

The shelves continue to get loaded up with donated items. Items that get collected range from toothpaste, shampoo, lotion, deodorant, and women's feminine products. 

Soap tends to be the most requested item from individuals. There is always more than 100 soaps in the inventory at a time. 

Detergent is a priority item that gets requested often. With in-hand money donations, Liz Corbett will go and buy these types of priority items to keep in inventory for those that need them.

The line of shampoo that is in inventory. Each bag has one shampoo bottle per hygiene bag.

The stocked toothpaste that has been collected over the semester. There is over 1,000 toothpaste collected. 

Liz Corbett plants spiritual encouragement around the office. "I want the volunteers and myself to remember what this is all for," Corbett said. 

Once the bags are packed, they will be put transferred into colorful string bags. The Button has stickers that they identify the business with, which is displayed on every bag. 

Director of PR for The Button, Tyler Martin, takes a glance at all of the collected items in inventory. "It took a while to count and organize all of this," Tyler said. 

The list of things to be done for volunteers on service days. When volunteers come, they will know what items to pack in which bags. 

Tyler points at a picture from one of her favorite service events that they had for The Button. They frequently host events where local foster care patients and volunteers can come and help out for service hours. 

The empty shelves that will soon be filled. These shelves stay empty until all the bags are ready for send out to schools. 

Tyler and Liz start filling the shelves up with the ready-to-go summer bags. They use Walmart grocery carts to transfer the bags from one room to the other. 

The ready-to-go summer bags. Each of these bags were all requested by students from local schools. 

The empty donations box proves that items are always needed! Each week, the number of people in need of items increases, meaning donated items are always in need.

Once all bags are packed, The Button delivers the items to the schools who requested them. All the students that receive their ordered bag will then have hygiene items to last them for at least one month. 

 

[PHOTOSTORY 5: STRUGGLE] FEEDING THE BORO

By: William McCranie

 

Feed The Boro is hosting a food drop at Statesboro High School. The event took place on Saturday, April 25th.

There is a lot of volunteers who showed up early this morning to give back. There were students from elementary school up to students at Georgia Southern, spending their time as volunteers.

There are pallets filled with food and essentials, like these cases of blackberry juice. The people in need lined up in a drive-thru line in their cars for Feed The Boro to have easy access to put food in their cars.

There is also fruit and vegetables ready to be given out, like these pears. Every car was given two bags each.

A young kid is picking up bags of beans to put in the next car. He spent a lot of time sorting the beans out of the bags.

Volunteers are waiting at their stations to load up cars. Each car was given fish sticks, fruit, drinks, beans, and snacks.

The line of cars wrapped around the parking lot, waiting for their turn. Cars showed up before 7:30 to make sure they had a spot in line.

A group of Georgia Southern students is waiting to hand out bags of pears. It was around 8:30 a.m., and there was a noticeable dent in the food left.

A Feed the Boro banner celebrating the United States of America's 250th birthday. There were multiple signs and trucks promoting Feed the Boro.

There's an overabundance of onions. At the end the organizers were telling the volunteers to take two bags of onions home each.

There are two lanes for the drive-thru, with stations on each side handing out food. This helped get through more cars faster and was efficient with all the volunteers there to help.

Many of the volunteers are wearing volunteer shirts with some of the local businesses that are helping sponsor the event.

Volunteers are handing out boxes of frozen fish sticks. There was also an overabundance of fish sticks, with some volunteers taking some home.

Bags of onions waiting to be given out towards the end of the event. It's no wonder they were asking some volunteers to take some home.

The last car in line is able to get as much extra as they need. The event ended a little before 10 a.m. with hundreds of people getting the food they needed.

The event is coming to an end, and volunteers are starting to pack and clean up. They are loading the leftover blackberry juice into a truck.

With no more cars in line, volunteers are breaking down boxes. These boxes will later be recycled.

Feed the Boro is using a moving truck to help transport everything. There was a ton of food piled onto pallets.

Volunteers are packing up leftover boxes of fruit cups. These are going back into the moving truck.

The volunteers are packing everything up. There was a big turnout of people helping and people showing up to be helped.