Teams of Habitat volunteers came back out. Now that the father of this young family was gone, the work loomed in the haze. The home needed a garage for storage and security purposes. The firepit he started needed finishing, and the sod for the sideyard needed to be installed.
Alice Dent, a CEO for Habitat, and also a member of the state board for housing in Michigan, coordinated the build, and the second wave of support. Even her board and colleagues accuse her of getting “too involved,” or being “too subjective.” Dent, however, checked off every box she could to ensure Olivia Boddie, and her kids leverage the love, wordlessly extended during this time of grief.
“Unless you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth, you know what it’s like to be struggling,” Dent said in August. “At one point, my family was living in an abandoned building,” she said of her childhood. The idea of inadequate housing, pressing together in the cold, languishing in the heat, little food, and little other resources, pushes her to help others build a new life for themselves.
According to the Habitat for Humanity website, the organization has helped more than 29 million people build or improve their home. In 2019, before COVID shut many operations down, Habitat experienced the record breaking pace of helping more than seven million people. Dent’s purview covers 19 cities in Michigan where she oversees everything from homeowner screening, access to no interest mortgages, financial and homeownership coaching, and, in some cases, grief and trauma counseling.
From where she sits, Dent effects a hugely delicate balance, for givers and receivers. Services and funds donated by Thrivent Financial Bank are part of that balance, as an example. Thrivent has maintained a partnership with Habitat for Humanity for more than a decade, and has poured $6 million into Habitat projects nationwide in 2021. In addition, it’s the company culture for employees to spend time working hands on, building homes for people who need them. The 120 year-old insurer and banking network was created by Lutherans with an original goal to help widows and orphans, so the Boddie home, allowed the Fortune 500 non-profit, to “come alongside” in a very personal way.
It was a perfect opportunity “to positively impact the world for Jesus,” said Jordan Blanchard a Thrivent associate financial planner in Livonia, Michigan. Blanchard worked at the Boddie project for four days, and was there when a men’s group came, lay hands, and prayed over Olivia Boddie.
“We put a village around her that day,” Dent said. “She will never forget it.”
