Keith Schoen recently joined the Habitat team through a year-long
AmeriCorps appointment to address establishing covenant church
relationships, applying for grants and using the volunteer database
more effectively.

Schoen has been a volunteer with Lawrence Habitat since the spring of
2009. He moved to Lawrence from Manhattan, KS where he graduated with
a degree in English Literature from Kansas State University.

Schoen spent the summer before his senior year of college in Mexico
and become certified in teaching English as a foreign language. Then,
during the fall semester of his senior year, he interned with a
non-profit school in the Dominican Republic teaching third, fourth and
fifth grade ESL classes.
When he returned to the United States he moved to Lawrence and
commuted to Manhattan one day a week to finish his degree. Although
he was working full time at Milton's, a local coffee shop, he started
volunteering with the Faith Relations committee at Lawrence Habitat.

When Schoen realized there was an opportunity to help out at the
Habitat office on a more permanent basis he worked with Lori Harse to
apply for funding for a year-long position through AmeriCorps.
AmeriCorps is an organization that helps place people at sites around
the U.S. to work on a variety of projects that improve the community.
In the past, Schoen has volunteered with the Boys and Girls Club and
spent a summer working 60 hours per week to help teams of youth
complete construction projects through YouthWorks in Logan, West
Virginia.

According to its Website, YouthWorks is a Christian ministry that
facilitates week-long youth mission trips to cities across the
country.

Over the next year Schoen will be working on three goals to increase
Habitat's capacity to build more homes.
The first, establishing covenant church relationships, will involve
working to define the commitments covenant churches must make and
reaching out to encourage other churches to make those commitments.
Schoen said covenant churches were important to fund development at
Lawrence Habitat because people were always tithing, even in times of
economic hardship.

The second, applying for grants, involves developing policies and a
grant calendar to help Habitat volunteers write grants more
efficiently. Schoen said that Lawrence Habitat was already very
qualified for a huge number of grants, but that past strategies for
applying had not been very effective.

The third, using the volunteer database more effectively, involves
working to engage volunteers, even after their work is done. Schoen
said it was important to maintain contact through thank you and
support letters.

Schoen attended AmeriCorps training the week of Aug. 24 and began
work August 31, 2009.

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