Aggie Habitat for Humanity is hosting its annual Shack-A-Thon to help raise awareness of people living in poverty across the world. The 10 organizations participating in the four-day event were each assigned a country to represent. The money raised will go toward building a home in Bryan-College Station.
The Mystery Shack: Egypt
“It’s inspired by the Scooby-Doo Mystery Machine and as part of shack, each shack has facts about poverty, a different country,” said Eleanor Crowley, psychology and Spanish freshman and member of Aggies Selflessly Serving in Shaping Tomorrow. “Our shack has facts about Egypt, so we have a pyramid with the facts, with the little Scooby Doo poking out; we have different details about ASSIST on the shack as well. We’re all pretty good friends so it’s not very hard for us to make entertainment. There probably will be a lot of dancing and singing going on.”
Baby Got Shack: India
“We have a side dedicated to India,” said Doug Franklin, Freshman Leaders in Progress advisor. “We painted an elephant and tried to make it a traditional Indian elephant with some designs and rag on top of it. We have three facts of about our country. Tonight, we’ll probably just enjoy each other’s company. It’s up to the freshman to decide what to put in here. I built it and they’re supposed to come.”
FAST Is Family: Mexico
“We joined in because we’re a service-based organization, to help them raise money, at the end hopefully someone will buy our shack,” said Alexis Harris, member of Freshman Aggies Spreading Tradition and psychology freshman. “Last semester we did a big car wash to help raise money for all the wood and materials. We’ve been working on it since the beginning of the semester. There’s going to be a GameCube inside so probably play some Smash, we’re going to have a speaker so we can blast music. I know we’re all sleeping here — there are at least 14 people sleeping inside of it. There’s probably going to be some tight squeezes in there but we’ll make it work.”
Habitat for Humanity: United States
“A lot of people don’t know Habitat for Humanity is a worldwide organization. We put dots on the map everywhere Habitat has an office and I think it’s in about 70 different countries. Most of the places are in the US; it started in [Atlanta]. It is supposed to be raising awareness for poverty housing but we all have power, some of these have TVs, Xboxes. It’s high-end poverty housing. It’s more the advocacy and letting people around campus know,” Lauren Boehm, civil engineering sophomore and director of special events said.
Geodesic Dome:Germany
“As urban planners and in the College of Architecture, we really wanted a different, unique kind of shack than what you see and we tried this last year, it looked really cool, and we got a lot of compliments on it so we’re doing it again this year,” said Hannah Oliva, member of Future Leaders in Urban Planning. “It’s definitely easier doing it the second time around. This year, too, we decided to recycle some tarps. [We] spray painted them and kind of incorporated our major within it, too. On some of the sides we have key words we talk a lot about in our classes and our country, because that’s the theme for this year’s Shack-A-Thon.”
Barn:Guyana
“We’re going to hang out in here, eat snacks, watch Disney movies on VHS, all the college things,” said Morgan Ellis, Alpha Phi Omega member and recreation, park and tourism sciences senior. “I think that shack in general represents what we do as an organization as well. We come in here to hang out with each other and just have fun. One of our main principles of our organization is fellowship so it’s kind of cool to be involved in something that’s not put on us but promotes the same thing.”