GRK hosts area event for Habitat for Humanity

By PAMELA GRANT
Cove Leader-Press

The cities of Central Texas banded together Tuesday to support a great cause—Habitat for Humanity—and the possibility to win an awesome truck.
Fort Hood Area Habitat for Humanity (FHAHFH) teamed up with Killeen-Fort Hood Regional Airport (GRK) for Tuesday’s Cross-Town Handshake event. Habitat for Humanity invited out the Copperas Cove, Killeen, Harker Heights, Belton, Temple, Salado, Georgetown, Innovation Black, Hispanic-American, McGregor, and Lampasas County Chambers of Commerce to attend the event. Other organizations attended the event as well. The event began at 11 a.m. and invited everyone in attendance to meet and mingle to learn about what everyone else had to offer each other. They, of course, encouraged participants to purchase raffle tickets and share information about the raffle online. Towards the end of the event, they held a door prize raffle with prizes that had been previously donated. 
In addition to being a get-together event, it was also part of the Fort Hood Area Habitat for Humanity’s 3rd annual Freedom Raffle. This year’s vehicle is a 2022 Chevrolet Silverado 1500 Custom. They sold tickets for $25 apiece or five tickets for $100. Their goal is to sell more tickets than the approximately 3,600 tickets that they sold last year.
“We get excited when we hit that break even number in ticket sales,” said Amber Phelps, Family Services Lead/Marketing for FHAHFH.
“We’re just trying to bring awareness to our mission and that’s affordable housing solutions for local Central Texas families,” said Phelps. 
Phelps said that they are not federally funded, so, to make anything happen, they must raise the money themselves. They do so through community support, fundraising, donations, events, sponsorships, and more. Once they hit the break-even number, everything else goes towards supporting their home ownership initiative.
To encourage more people to enter the raffle, Phelps reminds people that last year’s winner was a single mom who never won anything in her life who only bought one ticket and she won.
“It really only takes one ticket,” said Phelps.
Roque Aguon, Airport Business Manager & Disadvantaged Business Enterprise Liaison Officer, said that last year Habitat for Humanity also used the Killeen-Fort Hood Regional Airport to house the vehicle being raffled, but he wanted to be able to make an even bigger impact this year and the Cross-Town Handshake event seemed like the perfect way to do so.
“We wanted to help promote the Freedom Raffle,” said Aguon. “It’s about service to those that need help the most…It’s good to see these different parts of the community come together to help a good cause.”
Many of those in attendance purchased at least one raffle ticket.
“I’m a member of the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and I saw that all the other Chambers were going to be here, but I also wanted to support Habitat for Humanity,” said Mark Elliott, Senior Account Consultant with Georgetown View Magazine, about why he attended the event as well as purchased raffle tickets in support of Habitat for Humanity. “I’ve worked on projects with groups like Habitat for Humanity before…I know what wonderful work they do and how meaningful it is to the people who get to put the sweat back into their home…I really just wanted to be a part of it. It’s a positive, uplifting story.”
Habitat for Humanity will pull the winning ticket for the Chevrolet Silverado September 10 at the Harker Heights Food, Wine & Brew Fest. Raffle tickets can still be purchased online at www.fhahfh.org/freedomraffle.