Member Article

Yorkshire Housebuilders Plan Trip To Malawi To Support Home Construction

Representatives from Miller Homes in Yorkshire will be travelling to Malawi at the end of April to support the work that its chosen annual charity, Habitat for Humanity, does in Malawi.

Neil Reaney, 49, Land Director at Miller Homes and Hayden Patterson, 25, Assistant Site Manager at the housebuilder’s Shires Grove development in Boston Spa, will join colleagues from across the UK on the 10 day trip which will see them visit the community of Salima with the sole aim of constructing homes.

“This is a great opportunity for us all and we are very much looking forward to following in the footsteps of our colleagues who visited on the same project in 2016 and which was a resounding success,” said Neil. “We have been working hard to raise funds for the charity which does so much good work in African communities where it is needed the most and, to date, we have raised over £7,000 between us, and the team £41,000 in total, with more planned over the coming months culminating in a Hallowe’en ball at the end of October.”

As well as the physical construction of the new homes, the Miller Homes team will witness first-hand how a safe and secure home can benefit many aspects of life for the immediate family and wider community. The families which will be helped by Habitat for Humanity’s Global Village Trips will work with the Miller Homes volunteers by participating in the building of their own home, investing hours of their own labour through a process called ‘sweat equity’.

“Both Hayden and I were thrilled when we were chosen as Yorkshire representatives and we are keen to support this community and learning some very different aspects of housebuilding,” said Neil. “It is very easy to get wrapped up in the day to day work of building homes for communities in Yorkshire; this will really open our eyes and help us to make a difference to another community where new homes are just as, if not more so, important.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Helen Dillon-Pearson .