A Cause For Attention
Some bands pick a platform, some tours take a stand – Here’s music news that doesn’t highlight the messenger, just the message.
This week’s focus: The Appetite for Construction Tour, featuring Switchfoot andRelient K benefiting Habitat for Humanity.
Partnerships often lead to bigger and better things.
An organization called Habitat for Humanity invites people of all backgrounds, races and religions to build houses together with families in need. This fall, a team of two bands and the creation of a U.S. tour will demonstrate that with some collaboration, putting just a little bit aside can build up to a big difference.
The rock team of Switchfoot and Relient K are partnering with Habitat for Humanity on the “Appetite for Construction Tour,? running through December 3. Each band will be donating $1 from every ticket sold to the organization.
Habitat for Humanity International is becoming a worldwide movement. With a presence in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Guam and Puerto Rico, HFHI “seeks to eliminate poverty housing and homelessness from the world, and to make decent shelter a matter of conscience and action.?
While the name is well-recognized as a large organization, Habitat for Humanity’s work is accomplished at the community level by independent affiliates. Locally run, nonprofit organizations coordinate all aspects of Habitat home building in their areas.
Families in need of decent shelter apply to these local Habitat affiliates, but the program does not simply give away homes. In addition to a down payment and the monthly mortgage payments, homeowners invest hundreds of hours of their own labor – what Habitat calls “sweat equity? - into building their Habitat house and the houses of others. Because the houses are built using donations of land, material and labor, mortgage payments remain affordable, and those funds are used to build more houses.
Through volunteer labor and donations of money and materials, Habitat has built more than 225,000 houses around the world, providing more than 1 million people a place to call home.
The bands of this tour are putting their own version of sweat equity into the program, and joining a grassroots housing movement that reaches around the world. The members of Switchfoot write: “For us, this tour carries more meaning than simply a reunion of friends…it is also chance for us all to get plugged in to being a part of the solution in our own communities.?
Posted by Leen Morrissey on Oct 18, 2007 @ 12:00 am
