Thirteen RKYHS students traveled to South Carolina to volunteer on a Habitat for Humanity initiative. The trip was focused on aiding the reconstruction from the damage sustained from Hurricane Matthew in the small communities of Nichols and Sellers, South Carolina. Hurricane Matthew has kept people from their homes a year and a half after it hit the Carolinas. Nichols is only 50 percent recovered in getting people back home. The residents were very appreciative of the students’ work and they greeted students with the mayor and other town officials, along with a delicious kosher lunch.

“The idea that you would have to leave your home and go somewhere else because of a disaster like this is heartbreaking and to think it’s been so long ago and people still aren’t living in their houses, it’s really sad,” senior Sivan Leibovici said.

At the two homes the group worked on, the homeowners weren’t able to clean up their yards on their own.

“It was a mess when we came and to see how much work we did is really inspiring to know we are helping an elderly woman,” senior Ameerah Ali said.

The sixteen students from RKYHS volunteer for their Habitat for Humanity club at school and each year a big volunteer trip is taken. Rabbi Richard Kirsch the faculty adviser commented, “I purposefully wanted to choose an area like this that doesn’t necessarily get all the attention that maybe other areas get. I knew there was a real need for us here— even a year ago when I first contacted the town, and over the course of the year the need didn’t go away.”

The students’ visit was featured on three local news stations in South Carolina. After the few days of volunteering, the students spent Shabbat with the Chabad of Myrtle Beach.