Hammers And Hearts: VARs Give Back To New Orleans

Solution providers, friends and Everything Channel employees united Saturday in New Orleans to work on construction of two homes for Habitat For Humanity.

With XChange Solution Provider returning to the Big Easy after a four-year hiatus, the Everything Channel team came back with the mandate to give back to the city that was such an integral part of XChange in previous years.

Shortly after arriving in the East New Orleans neighborhood that is still recovering from Hurricane Katrina, Everything Channel CEO Robert Faletra addresses the volunteers.

Solution providers, vendors and Everything Channel employees are never wrong -- that everyone knows. And while that hardheadedness makes for good solutions, on this hot Saturday in East New Orleans, all the volunteers traded their hard heads for hard hats.

Aaron Frumin, 24, of San Diego, coordinated and organized the 120 assembled red-shirt-clad volunteers. Here, Frumin stands on a pallet of siding, explaining the jobs that need to be accomplished and how they can be done safely. A few bruises, cuts and scrapes aside, all the volunteers came away unscathed.

Of the numerous jobs that were accomplished during the Habitat build, both houses on the site were nearly sided bottom to top. Here, a group of volunteers, including Steve Burke (standing, center), director of news for Channelweb.com, measures out a 5-inch reveal on a side section of the house.

Frank Ballatore, president of The New England Computer Group, mans one of the circular saws on site. Ballatore was busy from the beginning of the day to the end, measuring and cutting the siding that the other groups were hanging on the sides of the two houses.

Up on a ladder, a Habitat volunteer celebrates after finishing putting the trim around the window.

Solution providers, vendors and Everything Channel employees use an array of tools in day-to-day work. In East New Orleans, everyone spent the day getting to know (or getting reacquainted with) tools such as this speed square.

Using a chalk mark, a volunteer spends part of the morning in the sun dropping a chalk line to mark the studs in the house.

Everything Channel CEO Robert Faletra stands on the ground, pulling the chalk line tight and snapping it to help mark studs.

Habitat For Humanity worked on two houses side by side in East New Orleans, pictured here. In the foreground, volunteers work on the roof, while in the background, the volunteers start hanging siding.

Everything Channel's Lisa Ferrante waits with a piece of siding as another group puts up a starter strip.

Bob DeMarzo, senior vice president and editorial director of Everything Channel, takes a quick moment to step out of the hot sun. Admiring the work on site, DeMarzo gets ready to step back up to the circular saw.

The always safety-conscious Kevin McDonald, executive vice president of Alvaka Networks, works on the porch while another group of volunteers works on the roof above.

At the start of the day, both houses on the Habitat site were wrapped in Tyvek. By the end of the day, three sides of each house had been dressed, if you will, in siding. Even without the roof, the differences from the beginning of the day to the end were noticeable.

A Habitat volunteer lets everyone below know that the work looks good.

A volunteer starts a nail before driving it into a stud on the house.

Everything Channel's Bob DeMarzo, far right, and Tyler Dikman, CEO and founder of CoolTronics, a Tampa, Fla.-based VAR, ready siding for the houses.

Two Habitat volunteers mug for the camera before finishing off a section of siding on the house.

A Habitat volunteer talks to a friend about how rewarded she feels by giving back to the New Orleans community.

Nancy Hammervik (far right), Everything Channel vice president, events, and Sonja Williams (second from the left), program manager for Everything Channel, watch the progress near the end of the hot Saturday afternoon with fellow workers.

Progress is apparent as Habitat volunteers continue to hang the siding on the houses. In the background, the second home gets the finishing touches of siding. All the homes in New Orleans built by Habitat for Humanity in New Orleans are built elevated in case of flooding.

As the afternoon turned to evening, the Everything Channel Habitat For Humanity group starts cleaning up the work site. Both houses started the day wrapped in nothing but Tyvek, a synthetic house wrap. By the time the group started packing up, both houses looked nearly unrecognizable from the morning.

Yeah, it was a long day full of hard, rewarding work, as Everything Channel's Rick Bellan shows.

All the volunteers and Habit for Humanity house-leader Aaron Frumin (left of center, in green shirt) gather at the end of the afternoon. It was a long, tiring day, but everyone felt as if they'd put in a hard day's work and were feeling fine.