Photo Finish: Mary Catherine Hamelin

A job that I imagined might be a glamorous stint in the public relations field ended up blessing me with a totally un-glamorous but most wholly rewarding experience. I found myself helping with publicity for Habitat for Humanity of Greater Los Angeles and, of course, brought my own camera along to capture my first build. It was the first of many builds I would attend that Spring and the one that would make me fall in love with its amazing team, volunteers, and mission.

This site in particular was for “Operation Home Delivery.” A home was started and framed in Santa Monica — where an elementary school had raised funds to completely support the day of building — then disassembled and shipped to Immokalee, Florida to be put together by the community of a family left homeless by hurricane season.

The most inspiring sight of the day was after hours of sawing and hammering away, when the group of people working on one piece of wall would line up at its edge, crouch down, and in one strong and unifying motion, raise it up together as a literally uplifting symbol of the work that was being done.

An overdressed novice, I had to convince the site foremen to let me “come aboard” to document the wall-raising moment in my wannabe fancy publicist slip-on dress flats. Once there though, smelling the wood and feeling the energy of everyone involved in this exciting task, I knew I would be back many more times to get my hands dirty experiencing this moment for myself.

I’ll be sharing my whole experience on the Awearness Blog soon — stay tuned.