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AIA members help to build new youth center in Southeast D.C. during 2012 AIA Convention

While thousands of architects came and went from the nation’s capital this past spring for the AIA’s 2012 National Convention, traces of this influx of architectural expertise and generosity remain. On May 16, one day before the official start of the convention, architects pitched in at a Southeast D.C. construction site to repair a blighted building that will be used as a new youth center for local nonprofit Sasha Bruce Youthwork. More than 120 volunteers from the AIA, Hanley Wood, and Reed Construction Data joined students from Sasha Bruce to participate in the one-day “blitz-build.”

The effort was a part of Reed Construction Data’s AEC Cares program, in partnership with Hanley Wood, which collects donated building materials and then organizes volunteers to participate in a service project in the local community of that year’s convention. Volunteers worked with students to repair the basic frame of the structure, install windows, and add an addition with a donated brick façade, giving them hands-on construction experience.

Sasha Bruce Youthwork provides health services, education, employment, and leadership training as well as stable housing for at-risk youth in Washington, D.C. The new center, located at 5032 D Street SE, will provide not only longer-term housing for homeless teens finishing high school, but offices for staff, a communal kitchen, and a greenhouse for growing and selling produce.

“Sasha Bruce Youthworks does so much good locally,” says Reed Construction Data CEO Iain Melville. “So for the AEC community to come together and to contribute the labor, materials, time, money, and know-how, which make a lasting difference to young lives in D.C., was both humbling and uplifting.”

Deborah Shore, executive director and founder of Sasha Bruce, noted the importance of the day for the student volunteers. “This really fulfills our mission not just to alleviate the issues that get in the way of young people reaching their potential, but to bring a very, very dilapidated building to a point where we'll be able to move into it,” she says. “It’s a great gift that made something happen in the District with lasting staying power.”

While the center would not be ready until summer, the director of Reed’s AEC Cares program, Sheyla Walker, noted that Reed was able to jumpstart the most critical stages of the project by first securing building material donations, and then planning and managing the logistics of the event. “Our help really got it off the ground. It allowed us to have multiple volunteers on-site and multiple projects going on simultaneously,” she says. “Reed gets to see where it started, how it will evolve, and is able to monitor the process through completion.”

A few others will be looking on eagerly as well. Washington, D.C., Mayor Vincent Gray was in attendance, along with Wendy Spencer, CEO of the Corporation for National & Community Service. AIA Illinois Executive Vice President Mike Waldinger, Hon. AIA, also volunteered at the event. “Volunteering builds relationships in the community. It opens doors for you to talk about architecture,” he says. “Real life is happening all around us for people who never knew they needed an architect until meeting one who volunteered.”

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