Shalena Jackson says that when her teenage sons, Christopher and Cortney, learned that their Habitat for Humanity home would be built by women, they were skeptical. The boys told their mother, “They don’t know how to build. It’s going to fall down.”
Christopher and Cortney may have been wary at first, but Jackson says her sons learned an important lesson: “They saw that women could do it.”
A crew of Habitat’s Women Build volunteers constructed the South Bend, Indiana, home last September as part of First Families Building Across America. Indiana First Lady Cheri Daniels was among the volunteers who swung hammers to help Jackson provide her family with a home of their own.
“I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know Jackson and working on her home. I must admit swinging a hammer was tougher than I expected, but it was truly enjoyable,” Daniels said.
Jackson works an eight-to-five job teaching a class of twenty three-year-olds at a local daycare. Following a long day of attending to the needs of preschoolers, Jackson says “you want to go home.” So, after years of renting in an unsafe neighborhood, she was determined to provide her own children with a secure home of their own. She applied to Habitat for Humanity of St. Joseph’s County to become a family partner, and she committed to making the necessary investment of time and energy.
Once Habitat approved her application, Jackson began attending homeownership classes one night a week. There she learned about home management, financial management and construction. As part of the financial management course, she had to adhere to a strict financial plan to demonstrate that she could faithfully make her mortgage payments.
In addition to the weekly classes, Jackson had to earn “sweat equity” by working on other Habitat houses before construction of her own home would begin. Habitat for Humanity of St. Joseph’s County requires 300 hours. As she worked on other houses, she saw that other people had managed to put in enough sweat equity to get started building their own homes. She says this motivated her, and she realized, “It is possible.”
