Sweat and Tears

BY KATE UNDERWOOD

Christian Appalachian Project’s (CAP) alternative spring break experience brings hundreds of high school and college students to Eastern Kentucky every year to make much-needed home repairs in the region. Many participants have been on the list for months waiting for eager volunteers to add their labor to that of CAP staff and to see their homes made safe, warm, dry, and accessible. But not this year. Though CAP staff had prepared homes for new roofs, kitchens, bathrooms, floors, and porches, new coronavirus restrictions required teams already here to be called home and led to the cancellation of the remainder of this annual housing repair blitz. This left many homes prepped for repairs and only CAP staff to do the work that would have been completed by hundreds of volunteers.

“We start making plans months in advance to select projects and pair incoming teams to worksites,” explained Bryan Byrd, CAP’s manager of Housing in Johnson, Floyd, and Martin Counties. “All of our sites had materials delivered and work started at various stages. We were one week into WorkFest when schools began canceling due to COVID-19 shutdowns. In some cases, that work was critical and needed to be completed as soon as possible, such as roofs that were partially covered or bathroom renovations partially completed.” YouthFest, slated to begin March 22, had to be completely called off.

Originally, there were 22 schools scheduled to participate in WorkFest, with an additional 30 groups expected for YouthFest and Mission Groups season. Many were cancelled or postponed due to COVID-19. The first week was completed, but as cases began to increase across the United States, colleges started recalling their students to campus which created a domino effect. CAP’s Leadership Team made the decision to cancel all remaining trips at the end of the second week of WorkFest. There were 16 schools that attended the shortened season.

“We usually set up 28-30 jobs starting in January,” said Teresa Gullett, manager of Elderly Services which oversees YouthFest, the high school service week. “We focus on things they can accomplish within that one week, like ramps and underpinnings,” she said.

Gullett had to notify many participants of the delay in their home projects due to COVID-19. “When we realized a few weeks before that we wouldn’t be able to do it, it was heartbreaking to pick up the phone and tell them it was cancelled,” she said. “They understood, but if it were my parent needing that ramp, I’d have been devastated too.”

Jill Stafford, a Housing caseworker, said that participants called her frequently during the shutdown, anxious for updates on when work might resume.

“We were all in the same boat,” Stafford said. “Our CAP offices were closed, and there were restrictions across the state. We wanted to help our participants, but we also wanted to protect them and ourselves from a virus that we didn’t know much about.”

CAP Housing staff in all primary service counties immediately worked to address critical repairs such as homes that needed roofs. Four months later, Stafford noted that work has resumed, but progress on the jobs is slow, since current restrictions only allow a few volunteers to work on a site at a time. “They’ve begun doing some of the outside work, but are generally not allowed inside the homes yet,” she said.

Byrd said a significant amount of work remains incomplete. “Instead of hundreds of volunteers, we are working with a limited staff of five people on these sites. There is a massive amount of work to be done on open projects. Other families who would have been receiving help are not, nor will they in the near future.”

Student volunteers also missed out on valuable service and learning experience due to the cancellation. “We lost a connection with students and short-term volunteers who come every year to serve as assistant crew leaders,” Byrd added. “That adds up to hundreds of hours of lost work as well as time our staff usually spend building and maintaining relationships with our dedicated volunteers.”

Prioritizing homes and projects to tackle is a challenge. “We have communicated our plans to meet the most critical needs first. That may mean bouncing around from site to site for a while,” Byrd noted. “Our participants have been more than patient and understanding. They remain hopeful about our return to their homes to complete the work that we started. It’s been difficult for staff and participants, but we will continue to build hope and transform lives. We all know that we’re in this together.”

There are 54 counties in Appalachian Eastern Kentucky and 38 have been deemed "distressed" by the Appalachian Regional Commission. "Distressed" counties are described as being in the bottom 10 percent economically in the country, but many of the counties we serve are in the bottom 1-5 percent economically. Last year, CAP completed 288 housing projects in 6 of those 38 counties. The overall poverty rate in Kentucky is around 18 percent which is 4 percent higher than the national average. However, the rate for the counties served by CAP is just over 30 percent. The percentage of children living in poverty in the counties CAP serve is even worse at 39 percent.

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