Habitat For Humanity Neighborhood Revitalization: Bushtown

Chattanooga, TN (WDEF) More than 150 volunteers from BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee teamed up with Habitat for Humanity Wednesday for the Neighborhood Revitalization Program.

They’re working in Bushtown through next week.

They’ll break up into several teams and complete both large and small projects in the neighborhood and at Orchard Knob Middle School.

The program is to encourage Habitat’s partners to do more in the communities than just build new houses.

They’ll help residents with things like painting, weatherization, yard work, critical home repair and rehab.

Dominique Brandt with Habitat For Humanity says, "They really empower the community. They make everybody feel better about themselves, and then even neighbors who maybe could do something but haven’t been get excited about doing something in their land as well and so all of the homes we start to see a tremendous impact. If you go down North Holly Street it’s a different street today than it was 12 months ago."

Habitat helped 8 Bushtown families last year, and thanks to a city grant it will help 16 this year.

The non-profit also hopes to expand this program to other communities in the future.

BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee also gave $10,000 to Habitat for this program.