Asha’s Refuge volunteered today with Christ Community Health Services and several other organizations in the city to assist the Binghampton Development Corporation with their demolition project to revamp some apartments they recently acquired. Some of the apartments will be future homes of refugees. The clean up effort helps to reduce crime that seems to be drawn to vacant and abandoned buildings. It also makes the Binghampton area a much prettier place to live! The amount of people who showed up to help with the project was an overwhelming surprise! There were about 150-200 people who were all eager to work.

I’ve never experienced a demolition project, but found it interesting watching all the men and boys kick in doors, hammer out sheet rock, chop out tile, pull down ceilings and take apart cabinetry. While I was worried about being accidentally knocked on the head with a hammer or getting dust particles in my contacts, most of the men were enjoying all the physical labor. I pressed through always finding smaller things to carry down the stairs to the pod or sweeping out debris. It was rather amazing to see everyone scurrying around the apartment complex in effort to gut each apartment and get it ready for its next phase. Everyone worked together so well and a tough project that was going to take an entire weekend ended up being accomplished in just 2-1/2 hours.

Thank you, if you came to help today! You are so appreciated. It will be so exciting to one day meet a family living in these apartments. Here are a few pictures from today which you may enjoy (there is one picture of the apartments that are across the street that were revamped by the BDC in the past few years so you can see what their new apartments may look similar to):