“I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.” Rabindranath Tagore once said. Charity organizations such as Habitat for Humanity embrace this philosophy to eliminate poverty housing and homelessness by constructing and building adequate and basic housing. Nrupatunga Kannada Koota (NKK) members volunteered to labor with this organization for several months this summer for a house constructed for the Adugu/Ahedor family in Milton/Alpharetta. The finished home will be handed over to the Adugu family this August.

Habitat for Humanity works through volunteer labor and donations of money and materials. Habitat builds and rehabilitates houses alongside our homeowner (partner) families. Habitat houses are sold to partner families at no profit and financed with affordable loans. In addition to a down payment and monthly mortgage payments, homeowners invest hundreds of hours of their own labor (sweat equity) into building their Habitat house and the houses of others.

The Adugu/Ahedor family originates from Ghana, West Africa. The family came to the United States four years ago as a result of mom, Phyl, winning the American Visa lottery organized by the United States. Phyl Adugu works in customer service for Fulton County. There are four children in the family. Currently the father, Mike Ahedor, is back in Ghana working to pay off the loans incurred so that the family could take advantage of the Visa lottery. While this has been a challenge for the family, he hopes to join the family in a year or two. The family is very grateful to Habitat for the opportunity to own their own home. They are excited to join with the community in providing sweat equity for their home.

The volunteers from NKK who took part in this event include Aadarsha Basavarajurs, Ramesh Masoor, Dr. Ramswamy. Indira Ramaswamy, Lakshmi Masoor, Dharani Kommaralu, Ravi Dharendra, Tanu Kumar, Pradeep Vittalmurthy, Srikanth Bellur, Vasudev Bhatt and Ananda Rajeurs. 

Keeping up the community spirit, NKK has also adopted Douglas Road starting at McGinnes ferry Rd to Jones Bridge Rd from the City of Alpharetta under "adopt -a-mile "program. Kannada classes are offered at 3 locations starting this September. Kannada crowd of Atlanta is also looking forward to the concert organized by NKK on the 12th of September. For further details about NKK activities please visit http://www.atlantakannada.org.