Design Corps – Raleigh, NC, USA
After completing my architecture degree, I wanted to use my skills to help improve the built environment and impact people’s lives in a positive way. Working for Design Corps as a VISTA volunteer allowed me to have contact with people from all facets of the community, while providing free architectural services to those who otherwise could not afford them. I also learned about aspects of community building, and home buying that I had either taken for granted or had not participated in before. With the position came considerable responsibility and freedom to identify and create the programs I felt were most needed by the rural North Carolina communities southeast of Raleigh, where I was working. My target population was the farmworkers: migrants living in employer owned housing and those who had settled in the area and were perspective home buyers. I was working closely with a local coalition known as the Housing Development Corporation whose goal involved improving the housing conditions and options of farmworkers. Through hours of conversation, research, and visits surveying existing conditions, I became fully immersed into the challenges and issues my clients faced in trying to secure better housing. My efforts to supply information, advocate for changes, and create new initiatives are modest compared to the unmet demand still present.
Two different projects that I developed were a bathroom unit to replace existing outhouses at employer provided migrant farmworker housing and Spanish home-buying counseling services for immigrants settling in the area.
The photos shown here I took when I began my position and was documenting existing farmworker housing and the surrounding rural landscape.