A Teen Effort

Story by Kate Silver and photography by Aaron Mayes.

In a new local Habitat for Humanity program, youths such as Jeremie Whiting unite for a good cause.

It's 7:30 on a brisk Saturday morning in February and the crew of kids looks alarmingly alert -- you might even say happy -- as they trek around a dirt-filled lot. Rather than sleeping in or playing Wii, they're pushing wheelbarrows and hammering nails at a construction site near Warm Springs and Tamarus. Watching the homebuilding is 13-year-old Jeremie Whiting and his mother, Jennifer Teal. At about five-foot-nine, Jeremie's manlike height is a stark contrast to his boyish smile, freckles and chubby cheeks. He's wearing a shirt that says "Ask me about Youth United" in a neon green hue that only kids can get away with. Its message is his mission: Jeremie is a special ambassador for Youth United, the new local arm of Habitat for Humanity that puts volunteers ages 5 to 25 to work building, painting and landscaping homes.

It's Jeremie's job to motivate youths to trade their pillows for paintbrushes on weekend mornings. Judging from today's turnout of 70, he's doing his job well. His pitch to them: Hey, if I can do it, so can you. And he has done it. Once a kid prone to trouble, Jeremie has donated about 400 hours to Habitat for Humanity, a nonprofit organization that enlists volunteers to build affordable housing. Jeremie will be the first to tell you that the experience has changed his life, maybe even saved it.

This redemption was partly due to the fulfilling (and freetime- consuming) experience of helping others -- today's endeavor is his seventh Habitat project. But it's also because not all of those homes were created equal. Ask this kid if he has a favorite, and he he doesn't hesitate to reply.

"Ours."

* * *

Today's project is the first Youth United home in Southern Nevada. The program was founded about seven years ago when Habitat for Humanity wanted more hands-on participation from young people. Nearly two years ago, Bobbi Hardy, volunteer coordinator with Habitat Las Vegas, decided to start a chapter here. She assembled a board, began raising funds and recruited volunteers. Those efforts have made today's project possible.

The single-story home is going up on a lot that will be shared with three other Habitat homes. The volunteers are trained and supervised by a staff of professional builders. The younger kids paint walls, while those 16 and older do the actual construction. They are all here for a host of reasons, the most common of which is the immediately tangible result of volunteering with Habitat: When the day is done, part of a house will actually stand.

This particular home will belong to Rosa Santana, a divorced mother of three teenagers who works in the housekeeping department at St. Rose Dominican Hospital. Dressed in a white T-shirt with red sleeves and a blue New York ball cap, Rosa is here, too, hard at work. (Usually her teens would be right here with her, but today they had other obligations.) Cheerfully, she hammers the frame that, in five months, will hold her front door. Until then, she and her kids are renting two rooms in a house, which is better than their former apartment, where every day they heard screaming sirens and watched drug deals. This is the third house Santana has helped to build, but it's clearly the most important. "It's exciting because it's my house," she says. "It's different."

Though just 13, Jeremie knows exactly how Rosa feels. He knows what it's like to live in the house on which he toiled. He also knows what it's like to be given tools -- literal and metaphorical -- and the lessons on how to use them. It's only been a handful of months since Habitat volunteers helped put a roof over Jeremie's head. Now he's happy to be able to do the same thing for other families -- kind of a pay-it-forward with houses.      1 | 2    Next Page »