EIU Media Relations

Students to Present $1,500 to Habitat to Build 3 Sri Lankan Homes

Three Sri Lankan families will be receiving new homes thanks to the fund-raising efforts of an Eastern Illinois University housing class.

Students, touched by the suffering caused by the Dec. 26 South Asian tsunami, set out to raise $500, the amount needed to build one modest home in Sri Lanka. In less than a month, they collected three times that amount.

The students and their professor, Pat McCallister, plan to present $1,500 to local Habitat for Humanity officials at 10 a.m. Thursday, April 21, in the Klehm Hall courtyard on campus.

Students collected the funds on a purely voluntary basis – the project was not an assignment – after seeing a presentation by Roy Lanham, a Coles County Habitat for Humanity board member who serves as campus minister at the Newman Catholic Center.

Each of the class’s 44 students had some part in the fund-raising effort, whether it was collecting money, creating posters, making boxes or doing other behind-the-scenes efforts.

“It was really very student-driven,” McCallister said. “It was just so exciting to watch them. They just got so interested because they were doing something for somebody else. They’ve made a change in at least three families’ lives.”

Those expected to attend the presentation include Habitat for Humanity director Holly Cox and members of the Habitat board; Jim Painter, chair of the Family and Consumer Sciences Department; and McCallister and her class.

Class member Kelly Partenheimer, a part-time student who also works in EIU’s registration office, said she was struck by “how willing people are to give of their time and money for a good cause.”

“It was an all-out effort,” Partenheimer said. “It wasn’t just a few people that helped. It was a whole community.”