Let's get started!

Welcome dear friends! Even though our departure for Kyrgyzstan is still many months away, we can begin some aspects of our planning. We expect to have a full team selected by the end of 2006 and are ready to accept your applications.

We fully expect that everyone who wants to come will be able to come, even if it means having two teams. While we realise that “a lot can happen in nine months”, we do want to get some level of commitment from you as soon as possible – it helps with planning and budgeting. If you have any hesitation about coming at this stage, that’s fine – just let us know.

In the meantime, you will each receive a number of documents to review and complete. Please send them back as quickly as you can. If you “think” you are interested in this but are not sure, just let us know and we can keep you in the loop with what is going on.
This blog will help us communicate among ourselves, and answer questions and concerns. It will also help us to get to know each other better before our build in Kyrgysztan, where we will do what we can to "give a hand up, and not a hand out." We are looking forward to a great experience of building homes, hopes and dreams together!
So, what questions do you have?

Where This All Began…


We (Emma Pearson and Laura Ferent) met in July 2005 during the first International Women Build held outside the US. Our build took place in the tiny village of Aghavandzor in mountainous Southern Armenia. The picture here shows our Women Build team. Emma is in the back row on the right, wearing the blue hat, and Laura is in the front row on the far left with the white t-shirt.
The women you see are a couple of international team volunteers (sponsored by Whirlpool), some Peace Corps volunteers working in Armenia at the time, local Armenian volunteers, and local village women. The woman in red in the middle is Gohar, for whom we were building the house you see in the background. Gohar, her husband Hovhannes, and their two children, Artur (then 12) and Gayane (then 9), moved into their house in Spring 2006. They had been living in a small metal container not much longer than Emma & Mike’s kitchen, provided after the horrific Armenian Earthquake of December 1988. Their young children had never had the experience of living in a house.
Next year our plan is to build a home, and hope, for a family in Kyrgyzstan.
In support of the build, Emma took part in a long trail run/walk around part of the Mont Blanc with her husband, Mike (it was 86km, or over 50 miles in length, with 4,500m climb). They finished it in 18h38min (see the link on the right to learn more about the Trail). More than $6,000 have been donated to date by Emma's friends and colleagues! This is FABULOUS! This is well on the way to reaching our goal of sponsoring a full Habitat house in Kyrgyzstan ($7,900 is all it costs). Many thanks to all of our supporters for your amazing generosity!