US volunteers for housing project

As Team USA competes in London for the 2012 Olympic Games, another team will be representing the USA for another cause.

Three representatives from the Greater Plainfield Habitat for Humanity, USA, will travel to Sri Lanka to build 24 houses with 300 other international volunteers for a week.

Executive Director of Plainfield Habitat, the Rev. Jeremy Montgomery will be joined on this trip by Westfield teacher, Shannon Stone, and Ian Ng, a carpenter. The majority of the other Habitat volunteers will come from New Zealand with the next biggest group from Japan. Volunteers from Australia, Great Britain and India comprise the rest.

During this one-week "Blitz Build," the effect will be made on a community in Pathayamwatte, and on the lives of 24 families.

These 24 low-income families, who named themselves the Society of Landless Families, neither own land nor a house. They live in dilapidated and substandard housing with limited sanitation facilities.