The Essence of Home: Building on Location in North Carolina

What’s more fulfilling than owning your own house? Perhaps helping someone else attain that goal.

Across the globe, Habitat for Humanity offers people a chance to own their own house and contribute to the building process. Earlier this year, we participated in constructing a home in partnership with a family in New Orleans. As guests of M&M’S®, we put on a hardhat, grabbed a hammer, and reveled in the opportunity to pitch in.

M&M’S® invited us back, this time to take part in the construction of two houses with Habitat for Humanity in Charlotte, North Carolina. Working side-by-side with NASCAR driver Kyle Busch and future homeowner Yasin Mohamed, we documented our day, from start to finish. Read on to learn more about the work Habitat for Humanity is conducting in partnership with M&M’S® for their M’PROVE AMERICA™ campaign.

Photography and video courtesy of Sanborn Media Factory.

Above: A team member adds the finishing touches to a paint job. Mars representatives, Habitat for Humanity employees, future homeowners, and various volunteers all gathered to help build the homes in Charlotte, NC. Volunteer duties range from administration assistance to on-site construction, with each job playing an integral part of the process. As site supervisor Mel Ressler explains, future homeowners choose their property, structure plan, siding color, and several other interior and exterior details.

Above: A team works to assemble the framing walls in one of the Charlotte houses. “The family is part of the process from the very beginning,” says Stephanie Murphy, a volunteer coordinator. “They actually start working on other people’s houses before they begin work on their own to earn their sweat equity hours, which is their physical down payment on the house.”

Above: By day’s end, the main construction of the second house was nearly complete. Busch says one of the most satisfying aspects of building with M&M’S® and Habitat for Humanity happens after the walls and floors are intact and “you can walk through the home and actually start picturing” the life that will happen. “Right now it’s just a vision, but once you start to feel it’s all coming together it really starts to turn into a home.”

Above: Together, M&M’S® and Habitat for Humanity are challenging US citizens to pledge 1.5 million minutes to build homes for those in need of affordable housing. Interested in taking part? Visit the Facebook app to learn more and pledge hours.