Thanks to everyone’s support through bake sales, rummage sales, and monetary donations, St. Joseph’s once again participated in the Housing Repair Program out of Clintwood, Virginia, June 18-25. Headed up by Dan & Sean Fejes, this year’s group worked on many different projects, but had three main sites. Traveling to the western tip of Virginia, the group included Ezra Bard, Bill Bash, Vince Festa, Claire Forrestal, Aaron Hluch, Chris Rector, Molly Ridge, Olivia Rocco, Mike Shilling, and Nell Simons. On one project they redid an entire bathroom floor, as well as repaired the roof and the ceiling, fixing the water damage that had occurred. During this same project they built a small shed to protect the family’s water heater from the outdoors. On another project volunteers began removing mold from the structure of the house. On their third and final project the group redid a roof, painted a porch and installed new shower equipment.

Before starting these projects participants were informed that this would be the last year for this specific housing repair program based out of St. Joseph Church in Clintwood and headed up by Sr. Jean Korkisch, CSC. They were all deeply saddened to hear that one of their favorite weeks of the year would no longer be happening, but before they left the group met with a lady who ran another housing repair program called “Binns-Counts” just 10 minutes away from where they stayed at the time. This is where groups from St. Joseph will be continuing our program for the foreseeable future.

Throughout this week volunteers had a lot of fun from the actual projects they worked on to the activities outside of their work. Clintwood, Virginia and the surrounding area is a very special place to us and those involved with our Appalachian Experience group are excited to continue their work there and hopefully remain there for years to come.