Each year, youth, (high school and older) adults, and college students participate in ASP's programs of home repair and new construction for the low and very low income families in the Appalachian region of Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee. ASP recognizes the problem of substandard housing and uses the hands and talents of willing workers to improve available housing as well as increase affordable housing by repairing roofs, building steps, rebuilding floors, insulating walls, painting rooms, and replacing windows, thereby making homes warmer, safer, and dryer.
Through whatever work is accompilshed, the volunteers have the opportunity to show their concern and touch lives. Each week is filled not only with hard work but with opportunity to learn and grow, to share, to worship, and to laugh and have fun.
Each summer, ASP operates twelve centers throughout central Appalachia. At each center a staff of four works with local community leaders in receiving requests for specific home repairs. The center staff then works with each volunteer work crew to decide the best way to accomplish the necessary repairs. The staff also coordinates supplies; manages housing and food arrangements; and facilities times of sharing, reflection and worship.
As we enter each community, we cooperate closely with existing service programs. We realize there are many needs in the communities we serve and many local service agencies cannot adequately meet all of the home repair needs in their areas. On the other hand, ASP cannot supply a community with the ongoing services and support which local agancies are designed to provide. Therefore, we work together as much as possible, each organization complementing the other by sharing the resources of short-term volunteers and long-term professionals within each community.
We do not expect thanks or reward; we simply respond to needs in a way that recognizes and respects each person's dignity, beliefs and lifestyle. As we serve and come to know other children of God, we learn to accept each other, right where we are and just the way we are.
Click on this document link to read an adapted version of Dr. Seuss's book - Oh, the Places You'll Go (with ASP)
