Student to Lead Habitat for Humanity Team

Courtesy of K-State Media Relations and Marketing

David Vogel, a graduate student in landscape architecture at Kansas State University, knows the principles of urban planning, how to grade a site for such basics as proper drainage, and the aesthetic considerations that make a house a home. But when he helps lead a team of volunteer builders to El Salvador during spring break, his most useful assets will be a strong arm and a supply of trowels.

“They’re like gold at a site like this,” Vogel said. He and 17 other volunteers with Habitat for Humanity’s Global Village program have the ambitious goal of finishing 25 single-family houses in Santa Ana, a city of 250,000 in the country’s northwest. All is to be done in just over a week, March 15-23. It’s called a “blitz build.”

Vogel is one of two co-leaders. His wife, Chantel Vogel, a K-State graduate student in curriculum and instruction, also is journeying south. Both Vogels earned bachelor’s degrees from K-State: David Vogel in 1993 in political science, and Chantel Vogel in 1994 in elementary education.

David Vogel then went on to law school at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. He practiced law for nine years “before deciding to do something more fun and interesting.” That led him to K-State’s College of Architecture, Planning and Design.

In Santa Ana, the masonry structures already are under construction and all the materials and most of the tools are on site. But Vogel’s group has been asked to bring trowels, and he intends to. “My experience is that you’re always looking around for a trowel, and guarding it,” he said.

That experience includes four previous trips for Habitat, two of which he’s led or co-led. Other destinations have been Gdansk and Warsaw in Poland; Actopan, Mexico; and a village near Nagercoil in southern India.

In addition to working alongside his team, Vogel and the other co-leader will handle all team expenses, maintain financial records, schedule activities and get everyone where they need to be on time.

“It’s no small undertaking for people,” Vogel said. In addition to donating their time, Habitat volunteers pay for plane tickets and a trip fee that covers expenses at their destination. It easily adds up to $2,000 per person.

Leaders such as Vogel travel free. But it’s the more intangible benefits that keep Vogel coming back.

“It’s nice to experience a culture on a more intimate level than you can from the inside of a tour bus,” he said. “You gain a much better understanding of who the people are and how they live.”

As a student of urban design, Vogel finds the Habitat trips both sobering and inspirational. Though the housing he’s built has been rudimentary by U.S. standards, “People are just glad to have any structure that keeps the rain off their heads,” he said.

On the positive side, he said, the developing world still builds its towns with foot traffic in mind, rather than the car. Church, market, residences — all are close to each other. The result may be crowded, run-down and an affront to first-world building codes, but it’s definitely accessible.

“They don’t have a lot of money,” Vogel said, “but they get a lot of bang for their buck.”