Dow AgroSciences, Habitat for Humanity and the Lantern House Trust have partnered to build a residential home in Inglewood.
The house will home up to five disabled people with their caregivers which is a first for Taranaki.
“It’s really exciting to come here and work on this house where we are collaborating to not just make it a home for a family but for the young adults who have disabilities to live together with their caretakers,” said Production Leader, Shannon Oglesby.
“This is our 6th house in Taranaki and I’ve been involved in several that Dow has done in the United States. We are excited to get a team out today to work together to make some significant progress.
The company is very passionate about every build and uses each opportunity for team building.
“We have expertise at our manufacturing facility like electrical, construction and engineering so it was fun to get people to come out and use their skills to help.
“We’ve got people from all our different functions, manufacturing, supply chain, commercial all working together from leaders to operators to engineers. We wanted to get a cross section to come out and work together to build.”
Dow AgroSciences have been involved in Habitat for Humanity globally for over 30 years.
“This is our second one in Inglewood, though this build is different from the first, being a residential home. There are then two in New Plymouth and two in Waitara,” said office manager, Dana Candy.
“We have people volunteering today that don’t necessarily work or interact with each other each on a daily basis at work so it’s great seeing them here working alongside each other doing something a little bit different.”
Staff member and volunteer Clare Nolan said when the call went out so many people stepped forward it was overwhelming.
“I think that it is fair to say that the idea of helping out was very, very popular amongst the staff. We have got two shifts with 10 on each shift as we had more people than we could accommodate.
“We intended to paint, but of course with the weather that didn’t work out so we have been doing insulation. We have brought one of our builders with us so he is out the back helping with the carpentry. We have got some of the maintenance staff in here helping out with the roof.”
Sherry and Andy Hay along with Julie and Roger Landers formed Lantern House Trust to ensure the future care and safety of their children.
“We are all quite similar in our philosophies of raising our kids and we are quite proactive about making sure there are good choices and they have a good quality of life. We go out there actively looking for those things,” said Julie Landers.
