Photos from the Rehab of Project 1 completed Spring 2016

The Shares card that many of us have no longer works.  Please access this website and reenroll in the program: http://www.escrip.com/merchants/identity/savemart/index.jsp  

Once enrolled, you will no longer have a card but will be prompted to enter your telephone number when checking out at SaveMart.

What is Shares?

Save Mart exists to nourish community. From the products we sell to the money we give, we’ve built our livelihood around watching others thrive. Each year Save Mart donates over $5 million and thousands of tons of food to nourish the communities we serve.
Through the Shares program, FoodMaxx, Lucky and Save Mart stores donate a portion of their profit back to schools and non-profit 501(c)3 organizations in their neighborhood. Our goal is to strengthen and nourish our communities—from food banks to schools, scouts to seniors.



Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find. Matthew 7:7
What we are asking for are people to volunteer and serve. There are quite a few opportunities for you to be involved in our mission to see that everyone in Merced County has decent and affordable housing.
One of the biggest needs we have right now is new construction leadership. We need more than one person to plan the workday, purchase materials, work with our partner families and supervise on the jobsite. If you can do any or all of those things, even just one day a week, or one day or week a month, we need you! Construction experience would be helpful of course, but is not necessarily required; A desire to work with great people, to give of yourself and to learn and grow are most important. In our quest to continually serve more families, we would like to undertake more home repairs under Habitat for Humanity’s “A Brush with Kindness” program. This too, will take more construction leadership, so I am asking you to prayerfully consider how you might contribute.
Another need is for a volunteer who will focus on fundraising. We would like to open an office in the near future. We have been functioning fairly well without one for more than 20 years, but if we want to expand and serve more families, we need that additional level of organization; a place to work, meet our partner families, train volunteers, store building materials and important records, and interact with the public. We will need additional funding to make this happen. We also will need more money to build more houses. We have just enough to cover the next two building sites, as long as no problems arise in the meantime. We would like to be able to serve more families by building at a steady pace of one house a year. If we can continue that pace and go beyond, the resulting mortgage income we generate can make the building cycle self-sustainable, allowing us to use donated funds to improve other aspects of our program. Please consider if you might be the fundraising chairperson we’re seeking.
We will happily welcome new members to the Board of Directors, and volunteers in the areas of publicity, volunteer management, fundraising, construction leadership, and people to help specifically with special events, mortgages and insurance. Volunteers with experience in real estate, legal matters, business or non-profits are highly encouraged!
All of this is with the vision of everyone in Merced County having decent and affordable housing. Please consider joining us.

Click here for a Brush With Kindness Application

“Brush With Kindness” is a new project for our Habitat for Humanity of Merced County.  We are looking for people with construction experience or willing hearts and hands to work on short term projects such as a ramp, handicap bars, gutter clean out, bushes trimmed, leaves raked, etc.  Senior citizens and handicapped persons will have the opportunity to apply and be interviewed for the selection process.  Applicants will pay for the materials used and volunteers will do the work.

Need:  Construction leader, crew members with various talents of construction, plumbing, landscaping, painting skills, electrical, and willing to learn.

The Mission

A Brush with Kindness seeks to bring volunteers together to live out their faith and values through helping low-income homeowners restore their homes so they can continue to live in a safe, decent and affordable home.

The Vision

Habitat has the opportunity to establish A Brush with Kindness in our community as a way to connect volunteers and their resources with opportunities to live out their faith and values through restoring homes of at-risk homeowners. 

The Problem

A Brush with Kindness began in response to an overwhelming need in neighborhoods to help low-income homeowners who because of age, disability or family circumstance struggle to care for their home.  After years of deferred maintenance, homes fall into disrepair and consequently fall into a downward spiral of code citations, loss of homeowner insurance and ultimately in mortgage foreclosure that impact not just individual homeowners, but entire neighborhoods.  A Brush with Kindness helps homeowners avoid issues that can lead to losing their home. 

The Solution

A Brush with Kindness relies on churches, businesses and community organizations that contribute volunteers, finances and materials to effectively serve homeowners in need.  

APPLICATIONS

 are available on our website: www.hfhmerced.org
Applications are to be filled out and mailed To:
Habitat for Humanity of Merced County
P.O. Box 423, Atwater CA 95301

Our Vision

A world where everyone has a decent place to live.

Our Mission Statement

Seeking to put God’s love into action, Habitat for Humanity brings people together to build homes, communities and hope.

MISSION PRINCIPLES

1. Demonstrate the love of Jesus Christ.
We undertake our work to demonstrate the love and teachings of Jesus, acting in all ways in accord with the belief
that God’s love and grace abound for all, and that we must be “hands and feet” of that love and grace in our world. We
believe that, through faith, the miniscule can be multiplied to accomplish the magnificent, and that, in faith, respectful
relationships can grow among all people.

2. Focus on shelter.
We have chosen, as our means of manifesting God’s love, to create opportunities for all people to live in decent, durable
shelter. We put faith into action by helping to build, renovate or preserve homes, and by partnering with others
to accelerate and broaden access to affordable housing as a foundation for breaking the cycle of poverty.

3. Advocate for affordable housing.
In response to the prophet Micah’s call to do justice, to love mercy and to walk humbly with God, we promote decent,
affordable housing for all, and we support the global community’s commitment to housing as a basic human right. We
will advocate for just and fair housing policy to eliminate the constraints that contribute to poverty housing. And, in
all of our work, we will seek to put shelter on hearts and minds in such powerful ways that poverty housing becomes
socially, politically and religiously unacceptable.

4. Promote dignity and hope.
We believe that no one lives in dignity until everyone can live in dignity. We believe that every person has something
to contribute and something to gain from creating communities in which all people have decent, affordable places to
live. We believe that dignity and hope are best achieved through equitable, accountable partnerships.

5. Support sustainable and transformational development.
We view our work as successful when it transforms lives and promotes positive and lasting social, economic and
spiritual change within a community; when it is based on mutual trust and fully shared accomplishment; and when it
demonstrates responsible stewardship of all resources entrusted to us.

About Habitat for Humanity of Merced County
Habitat for Humanity of Merced County is part of a global, nonprofit housing organization operated on Christian principles that seeks to put God’s love into action by building homes, communities and hope. Habitat for Humanity of Merced County is dedicated to eliminating substandard housing locally and worldwide through constructing, rehabilitating and preserving homes; by advocating for fair and just housing policies; and by providing training and access to resources to help families improve their shelter conditions. Habitat for Humanity was founded on the conviction that every man, woman and child should have a simple, durable place to live in dignity and safety, and that decent shelter in decent communities should be a matter of conscience and action for all.

All are welcome
Habitat for Humanity of Merced County has an open-door policy: All who believe that everyone needs a decent, affordable place to live are welcome to help with the work, regardless of race, religion, age, gender, political views or any of the other distinctions that too often divide people. In short, Habitat welcomes volunteers and supporters from all backgrounds and also serves people in need of decent housing regardless of race or religion. As a matter of policy, Habitat for Humanity International and its affiliated organizations do not proselytize. This means that Habitat will not offer assistance on the expressed or implied condition that people must either adhere to or convert to a particular faith, or listen and respond to messaging designed to induce conversion to a particular faith.

About Habitat for Humanity International
Founded in Americus, Georgia, USA, in 1976, Habitat for Humanity today operates around the globe and has helped build, renovate and repair more than 600,000 decent, affordable houses sheltering more than 3 million people worldwide.

 Board members or committee members are always welcomed. Join us at a board meeting to see if there is a spot that suits you. We meet at St. Paul Lutheran Church Library, 2916 N. McKee Rd. Merced on the fourth Monday of each month at 6:30 p.m.