Hill residents Yousufu and Mikiri Sheriff received a helping hand from the Neighborhood Housing Services (NHS) to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day with a community service project of fixing up the family’s basement.
On Sunday evening Yousufu received a last-minute call from Stephen Cremin-Endes, NHS director of community building & organizing, who offered to lend a helping hand from the nonprofit housing builder and Milone & MacBroom civil engineers and landscape architects.
The volunteer team of 15 began working at 9 a.m to help the Sheriff family clear out and repaint the basement of the 25 Stevens St. home.
“I haven’t seen the floor in years,” Yousufu said.
In the backyard, the team organized a dozen bags of clothing and piles of household items to be donated.
Yousufu and his wife have been collecting used clothing items and school supplies since 1989 to send to families who have recently left refugee camps in Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone.
The clothing items packaged in a 75-gallon barrel to be shipped off included brand-new or lightly used notebooks to help provide the families in need with school supplies. NHS will work with the Sheriffs to raise money for the barrels (about $45 each) and shipping costs (about $150 each).
The refugee experience is something Yousufu has lived through. “Since I got here, I have been doing whatever I need to, to be able to send these items to those in need,” he said.
Read the full article here.
© New Haven Independent, 2020