Will return later this month to complete home repairs for the needy

LITTLE ROCK (June 15, 2017) – About 160 volunteers are wrapping up the first round of neighborhood improvement projects in Little Rock making way for another round of World Changers volunteers to return to the city on June 26 to start more.

On Tuesday morning, a dozen or more volunteers were scraping and sanding faded lemonade yellow paint from the home of Erma Fonville in Little Rock’s Love Neighborhood.

Fonville, flanked by Little Rock Mayor Mark Stodola and City Director Joan Adcock, beamed as the group held a press conference to announce the 14^th year of the partnership between the city and World Changers. 

World Changers volunteers pay about $280 to travel to 50 cities around the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico to work on repair projects, said Jordie Skinner, a spokesman for the Little Rock group. The organization is supported by the Southern Baptist Convention, she said.

Stodola thanked the group for their hard work. “You are changing the world for so many of our citizens,” he said.

Fonville said she remembers being on the phone when she saw Adcock and Kevin Howard, the city’s community development manager walk up to knock on her door.

“They asked did I want my house painted and I just grabbed her and hugged her and grabbed him and hugged him. I’ll have been here 35 years in August and no one has ever offered to paint my house before,” she said. “It was just a blessing for me because I had looked at the roof. I didn’t think about painting the house. I was thinking I’ve got to try to do something to get a roof on this house. I’m thankful for them for offering and World Changers for doing the work.” 

Howard said the program provides painting and exterior repairs for home owners who wouldn’t be able to afford the work. After the two weeks of work, 27 homes will have been repaired, a noteworthy accomplishment, said Stodola.  

“To think that we can really transform 27 houses in two weeks is absolutely phenomenal. Last year we did 33. It really does transform a neighborhood,” he said. “Of all the things the city does, this is one of the most effective expenditures of dollars and labor and love that the city does and we could not do it without World Changers.”