Building Justice for ALL

BY: HBF STAFF

HBF is fortunate to have a team of young people from around the country who helped us with several of our shelter projects this year. They are volunteers with a unique program that teaches life lessons through construction

Building a new pen for goats is probably something the young construction crew never imagined when they signed up to spend their gap year in Portland. The nonprofit Tivnu brought the group to our project at A Village for One as a part of their mission to teach them that construction can bring social change. Construction Coach Erik Brakstad explains “Tivnu’s partnership with the HBF has leveraged us into more meaningful and consequential work in the community.”

This is the ninth cohort of Tivnu, which means build in Hebrew. The students pay tuition and move here from around the country for the nine-month-long, handson social justice engagement program for Jewish students. Tivnu’s founders say they focus on housing as a human right, and schedule the participants to provide volunteer help to nonprofits. Construction leader Brackstad says they are “Teaching the kids to use their minds, heart, and bodies to make positive change in the world.” Tivnu’s leaders also explain the program helps young people explore the Jewish tradition of mutual aid.

We met the team last fall at Project Homeless Connect when they had just arrived in town. HBF Project Manager Chris McDowell had the group come to Hillsboro to build a fence. The instructors teased them that they were on their way to earning a PhD. Translation - “Post Hole Diggers”. McDowell says “They start out green and they quickly become skilled in carpentry, landscaping and other tasks related to shelter construction, which meshes well with our programming in providing low-cost alternatives to construction labor”.

Most of the students are ages 18-19 and have been admitted to college, but deferred for a year to have this experience. For many, this was the first time they’d held a hammer. Sasha Rosenfeld, from New Jersey, is one of them. “It’s something I’ve never done, working with my hands and building, and I really like doing new things.” There was a steep learning curve at first, explains Zac Askinasi of the Bronx, New York. “It’s definitely hard, it’s satisfying, it’s fun to do. I’ve done some volunteer work before, but I’ve never done anything like this”.

By the end of the year, cohort members tell us they enjoyed all of the HBF projects they assisted with, but especially working near the goats as they deconstructed, and rebuilt the goat house. McDowell gave them a progressively more challenging list of tasks, and Tivnu’s Brakstad says that set up the team for success. “Chris was good at explaining the context of our work, and that helped the crew buy into trying their best - because it mattered.” Over the course of the year, they built gates and shelves, painted, installed cabinets, landscaped, and replaced window panes at three HBF projects, gaining skills and confidence along the way.

Tivnu students will also leave Portland with lived experience in HBF’s and HomeAid’s model of using the talents of the building community to meet the needs of shelter nonprofits. A great example is when McDowell and Tivnu repurposed lumber from a Lennar volunteer fence removal for Community Partners for Affordable Housing. “Those boards were loaded into Hazelnut Grove by Tivnu’s visiting group so it could provide heat for the community there in Overlook. There were really easy connections we can make with them because they have the labor.”

In addition to fieldwork for HBF, the Tivnu participants provided labor or interned for other local organizations such as Habitat for Humanity, REACH Community Development Corporation, and PCUN the farmworkers union. Tivnu’s guiding philosophy is that housing is intertwined with the overall health of neighborhoods and communities, which is an ideal partnership for our work. This successful year means we will welcome the next Tivnu group to lend us their hammers when they arrive later in the summer.

Would you like to volunteer for an HBF Project? Contact Chris McDowell Chrism@hbapdx.org.