Council Bluffs Habitat volunteers help build a home in Honduras

A team that included three leaders from Habitat for Humanity of Council Bluffs spent a week this fall in the mountains of western Honduras, mixing concrete by hand and laying block for a family’s new home. David Klitz, director of the Council Bluffs Habitat ReStore, led the group of 14 volunteers. It included Blake Johnson, executive director of Habitat for Humanity of Council Bluffs, board member Diana Garcia, and volunteers from Habitat for Humanity of Omaha. “I cannot wait to go back,” Klitz said.

The team worked in Gracias, a town in the department of Lempira near Celaque National Park, through Habitat’s Global Village program. In the program, small volunteer teams travel to build alongside Habitat affiliates in other countries. The homeowner and his fiancée owned their land but had no way to finance a house. Over the week, the volunteers hauled dirt, mixed and poured cement and lifted concrete block, finishing the first stage of the home before they left. They had no power tools. “We were the power tools,” Klitz said.

Habitat for Humanity works in about 1,200 U.S. communities and 70 countries, and about 20 to 25 of those countries host Global Village teams. Volunteers raise money to cover their lodging, meals and travel within the country and pay their own airfare. Klitz said 40 to 45 percent of those costs go directly to Habitat for Humanity of Honduras. He said the Honduran affiliate, which is about the same age as the Council Bluffs and Omaha affiliates, builds roughly 300 homes a year.

The program shut down for about five years during and after the COVID-19 pandemic and has started up again within the past year. Klitz, who has led Global Village trips since before the pandemic, said the Council Bluffs affiliate hopes to offer one each year, possibly to Mexico or back to Honduras. Dates have not been set.

Klitz said the work matters, but the people matter more. Local firefighters and paramedics stayed on the site each day to keep the team safe, and Klitz said one of them told him how much he enjoyed getting to know the visitors. The team also shared meals with local families, ate the Honduran street food called baleadas, and visited a couple working to protect wild macaws. “What you and I want is exactly what everybody else in the world wants,” Klitz said. “To have those relationships and to have those conversations is the magic part of it.”

At home, Habitat for Humanity of Council Bluffs has about 12 homes in some stage of construction. The ReStore, at 1228 S. Main St., sells donated furniture, appliances and building materials at 50 to 70 percent off retail. Klitz, who has worked with Habitat ReStores since 2007, said all of the store’s proceeds, after expenses, go toward building homes in Council Bluffs. Donation guidelines and a pickup request form are available at habitatcb.org.