ST. MARYS DEANEARY — A year ago, Ben Huelskamp had built homes for three needy families in Haiti. But he had begun to feel frustrated by the intensive labor the project required. He considered giving up his dream of establishing a village near the town of Plaisance.

Today, four more families have moved into new homes built by Huelskamp. With the help of volunteers from throughout the St. Marys Deanery, Huelskamp has also constructed latrines for the next 12 homes, and negotiations are underway for the construction of a road.

The Maria Stein resident and parishioner at St. John Church, part of the Maria Stein Cluster, said his renewed enthusiasm for the project came from meeting the families who benefited from his efforts and seeing the families settled into their homes.

COURTESY PHOTO

One Block at a Time volunteers and local residents work together to construct Saint Michel Village near Plaisance, Haiti.

Huelskamp’s dream of providing housing for Haiti’s poor began when he first visited the country in 1999 with his sister, youth minister Linda Thieman of St. Henry. A few years later, he approached Congregation of the Holy Cross Father Andre Sylvestre, the parish priest in Plaisance at the time, about building a home on someone’s property. Father Sylvestre had another idea: to build a village on church land.

While initially disbelieving that he could take on such an ambitious project, Huelskamp said he "went home, prayed about it, thought about it. And I thought, ‘I have this opportunity.’ So I started my own nonprofit."

The organization he created, One Block at a Time, has become a full-time job. Huelskamp coordinates every effort in keeping the organization alive: construction, fund-raising, marketing and volunteer coordination.

"We’ve gone from the idea that I would build one home to the idea that I’m building a community," he said.

More than a thousand people turned out last September for the grand opening of Saint Michel Village, located about 300 yards from the church at Plaisance.

For Huelskamp, one of the biggest surprises of the day was the arrival of his mother and other friends and family, who made the trip to Haiti for the event.

"They made a big to-do out of the whole thing," he said. "It was great."

This summer, Huelskamp plans to launch a statewide fund-raising campaign for the next stage of the project, building a road from Plaisance to the village. Currently, all building materials, including concrete, doors and lumber, are delivered to the church and carried by hand to the construction site. He estimates he will need $40,000 to build the quarter-mile road. If he is able to negotiate use of the city’s engineers and equipment, he said, he could more than double the road at the same cost. The additional length would allow aid workers to reach thousands of people living in the mountains.

Huelskamp said he hopes Saint Michel Village will eventually include 35 homes, a hand-dug well, a room for literacy classes and meetings and a playground. His current fund-raising goals are to secure financial support for the road, as well as for maintenance of the existing homes.

Each three-room home, which costs $7,000 to build, features the name of its sponsor on a nameplate outside the door. The St. Henry cluster of churches recently donated funds to sponsor the construction of one home, and Huelskamp said Piqua Catholic School is launching a yearlong fund-raising drive next month.

When the work becomes overwhelming, Huelskamp said he keeps going with "a lot of praying."

"I honestly believe God put me in Haiti," he said, citing a sequence of events in his life that culminate in his arrival in the country and mission work there. "I’m not planning on going there and changing the world. I can’t do that. But I can make a little bit of a difference to a few people. If I get all these homes built, it’ll make a difference in 300 people’s lives. If we get this road built, then it could be thousands."

For more information on One Block at a Time, visit the Web page at www.oneblockatatimeinc.org.