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| Success Stories: Youth Volunteers Provide Home Repair to Elderly |
Outline of Need:
How Rural Development Helped: The City of Trenton in north-central Missouri (pop. 6,216) contacted the Chillicothe office of USDA Rural Development requesting funding for home repairs to be completed by youth volunteers from World Changers, a faith/based (Baptist) organization that does volunteer home repairs in the United States and other countries.
The Results: This began a partnership between the City of Trenton, Rural Development, and World Changers. In July 2006, 235 World Changer youth volunteers (junior high, high school and college students) working in supervised crews met in Trenton and replaced roofs, siding, doors and windows, painted and did other repairs to approximately 20 homes. This was the third World Changer home repair event in Trenton in the last four years. Approximately 60 homes, mostly belonging to low-income elderly, have been repaired that would otherwise have not been. The youth volunteers stay in a local school, they are fed by multi-denominational local church volunteers. The quality of the work has been very good and everybody involved seems to be a winner. The homeowners have been thrilled and very appreciative, the City of Trenton gets a neighborhood improvement project, and the youth volunteers have the satisfaction of performing a valuable and appreciated service. For Rural Development, it has been an effective way to leverage home repair funding since program funds do not have to be expended for labor.
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(August 2006) |
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The rural Missouri town of Trenton, as typical in most rural communities in Missouri, had many low-income elderly residents desperately in need of renovation and repair of their homes. The repairs included roofs, siding, doors, windows, guttering, etc. 
Rural Development agreed to provide $34,000 in home repair grant funding to applicants who met the eligibility requirements for the 504 program 
