Photos by Ralph Freso / Slideshow
As a social worker, Junie Monongye has helped collect water, clothing and other desperately needed items for people who have lost everything.
But when a fire tore through her and her husband’s west Phoenix home, only then did she really understand what the people she has helped throughout the years have gone through.
“Honestly, until you’ve been on the other side, you don’t know that kind of trauma. It’s humbling,” said Monongye, wearing a T-shirt that says “Choose Kind.”
She spoke as a legion of purple-shirt-clad Grand Canyon University students hustled to roll and brush a layer of paint on the Monongyes’ home on Saturday as part of the semiannual Lopes Go Local, when students radiate through the neighborhoods near GCU with partner Habitat for Humanity Central Arizona to paint and landscape homes.
On Saturday, it was six homes and more than 100 student, faculty and staff volunteers from such groups as Local Outreach, beach volleyball and the College of Natural Sciences.
Recently, GCU marked a milestone: the completion of the 10th year of the unique GCU-Habitat partnership to renovate homes and help transform nearby neighborhoods.
For almost a year, the Monongyes lived in relative’s single room. The smoke damage made their house unlivable.
But they returned to their home on west Pierson Street four months ago, though there’s still an overwhelming amount of work to do.
Boxes and boxes of possessions still need to be unpacked.
But on this day, Junie Monongye – her surname means “chameleon” in her native Hopi language – is pausing from all that needs to be unpacked to receive that ray of light that’s GCU and Habitat for Humanity.
This is the third time she has received help from GCU and Habitat: one time to replace windows, a second time for landscaping, and now for a new coat of paint on her house.
“I get teary-eyed every time I think about it,” Monongye said of seeing an army of students converge on her home.
She makes time for the students who ask about her. She not only shares her home with them but where she’s from, one of the oldest Hopi villages, “considered a monument … It’s so remote.”
“We had a hard two years,” she said, but believes there’s a silver lining at the end of the tunnel. “I truly believe it,” she said, and GCU and Habitat are part of it.
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It was in 2014 that GCU announced it would embark on a unique partnership with Habitat.
The initiative reflected the university’s Christian worldview – one that aligned with the worldview of the Christian housing ministry – and it embraced the university’s missional tenets to love and serve its neighbors.
It also addressed one of the points in GCU’s Five-Point Plan for the community, which is to improve home values.
GCU President Brian Mueller often speaks of the university's vision to bring about transformation in a broken world and spur human flourishing.
The partnership with Habitat brings that vision to its west Phoenix neighborhood by restoring homes in the area and bringing those neighborhoods back to their middle-class roots.
Roger Schwierjohn, former president and CEO of Habitat for Humanity Central Arizona, said in 2014, after the GCU-Habitat partnership was announced, how special the initiative was. “It’s one of the first of its kind, if not the first, across the country, in which a university is partnering with a Habitat for Humanity affiliate to impact an entire community.”
The first houses were revamped in January 2015.
Since then, more than 600 homes have been renovated, with median home values rising 869% in the 85017 ZIP code since 2011. Those 1,535 repairs have been made possible thanks to more than $6.2 million that has been raised through employee giving program Allocate to Elevate, in which employees can redirect what they would pay into state taxes into charitable initiatives supported by GCU.
Employees also have contributed the manpower to make those rehabilitations happen, with more than 39,100 volunteer hours completed.
Mueller said on the latest “Habitat Now!” podcast that GCU had started ramping up its investment in the community 12 to 13 years ago and realized it wasn’t equipped to do these home renovations but Habitat was. Their partnership has been a winning combination.
One of the best parts of the alliance for him over the decade is getting to know the young homeowners that GCU and Habitat work with.
“There’s so many memories of mostly young families who home ownership is a big deal for them. They’re so proud of the home they’re in but know it can be better,” Mueller said. “Spending that time working with them and watching how they feel when we walk away and the house is freshly painted.
“ … The pride that is in their eyes and how good they feel makes you feel like this is a real worthwhile thing. Let’s keep going.”
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Dr. Mark Wireman gingerly balanced on a ladder at the home of Kathy Ortega, stretching to dab a little paint on a missed spot at the house, decorated in the front with pink flamingo yard décor and verdant palms and greenery of all kinds.
The birds chirped. The Phoenix sun rose, and by 9:30 a.m., the January crispness in the air was all but gone.
It was a setting much different from the classroom for Wireman, a professor in the College of Natural Sciences and a faithful volunteer for six years – maybe seven, he said. He volunteered alongside fellow faculty and staff in the college.
They have contributed much to that 39,100 volunteer hour count, signing up for a Habitat project as a group every year.
“We just like getting away from the classroom and have normal (nonacademic) conversations,” Wireman said.
“It’s the camaraderie,” I would say, added Dr. Jon Valla, the college’s associate dean, of building community within his college while also helping the community just outside of GCU.
It’s a chance, too, to bring some of their favorite students into the volunteer group, like senior biology/pre-med senior Alex Dixon.
This was her third year to lend a hand on a Habitat project.
She likes that she doesn’t have to go far from home to help people; there are people to help right in her back yard.
“And it’s an opportunity to hang out with our professors and see them outside of school,” she said, and for a few hours, “ … It’s nice to have the opportunity to not focus on studying.”
Wireman said, in thinking on 10 years of the partnership with Habitat, that he doesn’t see himself stopping volunteering for the GCU-Habitat initiative anytime soon.
“We’ll keep on doing this every year,” he said, “and keep on helping.”
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A mile down the road from the home the College of Natural Sciences was refurbishing, the beach volleyball team and members of Local Outreach were painting a home on West Marshall.
Both groups are perennial volunteers, with the beach volleyball team manning Lopes Go Local full-force, bringing about 20 of the team’s student-athletes.
For beach volleyball’s Katie Keefe, a master’s student in psychology, what she has loved about volunteering at Lopes Go Local for the past three years is “the reaction of the person who comes home and them getting to see the house transformed in a few hours.”
She echoed Wireman’s sentiment about the 10th anniversary: “Honestly, this team will probably be here 10 more years away.”
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Dusty Parsons, chief marketing officer at Habitat for Humanity Central Arizona, was on the Promenade at GCU by 7 a.m. Saturday, where more than 100 students and faculty gathered before dispersing, many by foot, to nearby homes for Lopes Go Local.
They grab a breakfast burrito, snacks for the day, take a group photo and listen as Erik Nelsen, director of Spiritual Life, recites John 13:34-35: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
And they hear words of support, too, from Todd Rogers, president and CEO of Habitat for Humanity Central Arizona, who references the “blood, sweat and tears” students have put into their volunteer work to help their neighbors throughout the past decade.
“That’s absolutely tremendous,” he said.
Parsons is a regular at Lopes Go Local, supporting students and the GCU-Habitat mission, and was there more than 10 years ago when the seeds were germinating for the partnership.
“We knew something special was going to happen when GCU approached us,” he said of what he calls “such a perfect partnership.”
When you ask him if there’s one home or one homeowner or one moment that stands out in that decade of work, he smiles. Yes there is.
He was in the grocery store when a woman named Susan recognized him and asked him if Habitat was fixing homes in the neighborhood.
“We were able to go in and work on her home and replace the windows. And I remember the day students came down her street. She broke into tears. … I love when Phoenix gets smaller like that,” he said of getting the chance to help your neighbor.
“I’m looking forward to the next 10 years.”
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Lana Sweeten-Shults, manager of internal communications for GCU’s Office of Communications and Public Relations, can be reached at [email protected].
