Lana Bellamy

lBellamy@th-record.com

CITY OF NEWBURGH – The garage in the back of Habitat for Humanity of Greater Newburgh’s offices on Monday morning was full of the sounds of hammers driving nails into small chunks of wood as adults and children built birdhouses to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Habitat welcomed the public to pitch in at six sites in the city in honor of the volunteer-focused holiday, including painting at Head Start of Eastern Orange County, working at the ReStore on South Plank Road, and tidying at the Newburgh Ministry on Johnston Street.

Yolanda Fearon and her son Semaj Valdes, 8, painted a birdhouse together inside the Washington Street garage.

“This will be a nice addition to the house,” Fearon said.

Fearon’s family is considered a “partnering family,” which has been selected to receive a Habitat home in Newburgh. Fearon was working toward her “sweat equity” contribution on Monday.

Habitat requires homebuyers to participate in volunteer work and home-owning courses before receiving a home of their own, said Habitat’s Operations Manager Amy Gigliuto.

A single-adult family must chip in 250 “sweat equity” hours and two-adult families must complete 500 hours.

As Fearon worked on the birdhouse with her son, she reflected on the legacy and vision of Martin Luther King Jr.

“He wanted everyone to be treated fairly,” she said, referring to the “separate but equal” justification for segregation in the mid-1900s.

Fearon said the phrase should instead be “separate but not equal,” something King alluded to in a 1956 speech in New York City about desegregation.

“I think here (locally), I see people are treated fairly, but on a broader spectrum they aren’t,” Fearon said, adding society still has a lot of work to accomplish in achieving complete racial equality.

Crystal-Renna Lewis-Schraeder brought two of her Youth Advocate Program clients, and her son, Alex-Terrell Lewis, 16, to the Habitat activity.

She tries to do meaningful work with her clients, which oftentimes involves volunteering.

Though Lewis-Schraeder enjoys volunteering on MLK Day, she said people should strive to emulate King’s charitable spirit every day of the year.

“Here, you have people of many races, young and old,” Lewis-Schraeder said. “There are 30 people here working for a cause and this is a wonderful thing. Bringing people together, no matter what their background is.”

lbellamy@th-record.com