To create this feeling for families who will soon own homes in the San Francisco area, INTA volunteers yesterday poured brown sugar, flour and chocolate chips into jars as a housewarming gift.
“It’s not just giving them a house,” said Michael Riley, who led the project for Habitat for Humanity, this year’s volunteer service project. “They’re putting together all the little things that make the house a home.”
By tomorrow, the items will be in the hands of single mothers who otherwise couldn’t afford houses in the area, he added.
At the session in the Marriott Marquis, several attendees traded in their suits for jeans and T-shirts and spent the afternoon painting, stapling and hammering. They came to the Annual Meeting from as far as Singapore, Australia, Guatemala and India, in most cases as strangers.
“I just think it’s a fabulous opportunity to work together with each other, first in the same practice area, and really bond in a way you don’t really get to bond,” said David C. Lee, of Fitzgerald Abbott & Beardsley in Oakland.
In her second year doing the project, Keri Johnston, of Johnston Wassenaar in Toronto, said she valued the opportunity. “It’s important that INTA gives back to the communities it goes to.”
