Saturday’s 10 inaugural volunteers enthusiastically took on their jobs at the worksite—sawing plywood, nailing up wood siding, applying weather strips to windows and landscaping with shovels and rakes.

“Usually when I do Habitat, it’s at the later stages and you just grab a paint brush and it’s really easy. But here it’s complex stuff—people are using power tools—and y’all are handling it very well,” PBHA Executive Director Gene A. Corbin told the students during a lunch break.

The hands-on approach turned out to be more than the planners bargained for after this reporter cut himself with a circular saw. While the injury turned out to be minor, Safdi says that power tools will likely be off-limits to participants in the future for safety and liability concerns.

Tomorrow, the planners expect a temporary influx of help when the nonsenior members of the men’s varsity soccer team will join volunteers at the site as part of team’s annual tradition of spending a day devoted to community service.

In addition to attracting students, organizers also hope to involve other members of the Lowell community.

Harvard Divinity School Assistant Dean for Student Life Belva B. Jordan says she and fellow Lowell Senior Common Room (SCR) member Emily H. Moss, who is also an associate of the anthropology department, hope to spread the word about the project.

“My sense is that as they hear about it, more Senior Common Room members will become interested,” says Jordan, who plans to work at the site and make a donation. “If you’ve got two of us at least who are talking it up at the beginning, then maybe that’s the start of something.”

Even the heads of the Lowell community seem enthused by the partnership.

“[Co-Master Dorothy A. Austin and I] are very excited about it and hope to wield a hammer one weekend ourselves,” Lowell Master Diana L. Eck writes in an e-mail.

SHOW ME THE MONEY

Wielding a hammer and other manual labor is only one facet of the House’s obligation.

In order to work on a Habitat site, a group must commit to fundraising for construction. Lowell thus faces the daunting task of generating $20,000 for the Arrowhead site by the end of next fall.

“It’s definitely achievable. We raise more than $20,000 each year,” says Jordan W. Thomas ’04, a former director of the Harvard Habitat board. “But it will take commitment.”

Thomas adds that in his experience, while people tend to get excited at the worksite, channeling that energy towards the less glamorous task of fundraising is “the difficulty” of community service projects.

According to Safdi, organizers hope to raise $5,000 towards the project this spring and the remaining $15,000 in the fall—a goal they are well on their way to reaching with last weekend’s date auction earnings.