Saving the world... again

Perhaps, for those of you that are rather loyal blog readers (yeah, both of you), you might recall a little rant I had a few posts ago about thrusting off my responsibility for humanity and adopting, instead, a lifestyle of Guinness pints, good conversation, and sloth-like mobility.

Seriously. You believed that?

OK, OK, I haven't converted to my old self but I have adopted a new cause.

On Tuesday, I hopped a bus to Belfast for a volunteer meeting with Habitat for Humanity. After a delicious fish and chips lunch with Geoff at Bishop's (I swear, if we are what we eat, Geoff is one-hundred-percent Bishop's fish and chips), I grabbed a taxi to head to the Habitat headquarters in Northwest Belfast.

I e-mailed Habitat to see about the possibility of working on the weekends on any build sites in the area. Instead, they proposed that I take on a new "legacy project" they are completing.

Essentially, Habitat began the "Northwest Belfast" project four or five years ago in two distinct neighborhoods: one Catholic and one Protestant. For a few months, they would work on two houses in one neighborhood before switching to two houses in the other. Because Habitat believes in the concept of "sweat equity," homeowners in each neighborhood would be responsible for building houses in the other.

Sounds simple, right?

Remember, of course, that these are deeply sectarian divisions in these neighborhoods. A Protestant from one is likely to have never had any contact with a Catholic in the other. Their kids go to different schools. Their churches are miles apart. And their concept of an Irish identity is pretty much derived from a crippling distrust and sense of victimization from the other group.

So, perhaps not as simple.

Even more exciting, they've been taking residents of both communities on Habitat builds around the world, to places like Georgia and Guatemala. The idea is to remove the religious divisions that they live in and to create a safe, apolitical environment where they can just get to know one another and learn to help one another.

The project will be ending in June and, realizing the significance of the work they'll be doing, they wanted to find a way to memorialize their work.

Enter one history-degree carrying, oral history loving American.

My job for the next year will be to uncover the history of the two neighborhoods prior to Habitat's work and then the progress of the Habitat project. I'll be interviewing Habitat workers, volunteers, homeowners, and international teams that have worked on the project. I'll be sorting through memos and newspaper articles and photographs. I'll be discussing the impact of religious migrations and the Troubles.

In the end, I'll produce a book about the Northwest Project to capture the individual stories and the overall narrative.

It couldn't be more perfect.

Even better, there might be a way to combine this research with my master's thesis so that I can save some time in the long run.

So, essentially, that's still kindof being a carefree twenty-something. Right?