Ground Breaking for YouthBuild Omaha's LEED-Certified Home

When: Tuesday, September 28th at 10:00am

Where: 2201 Fowler Ave.

YouthBuild Omaha, a local partnership between Goodwill Industries and Habitat for Humanity, will host a Ground Breaking event for a new high-efficiency, green home. The project is among the first LEED-certified homes in the Omaha area, and the first designed specifically for low-income families. The house will become a real-life learning laboratory for YouthBuild Omaha students, all of whom previously dropped out of high school. While building the house with trainers from Goodwill and Habitat, the students will gain new skills, learn about energy efficiency and sustainable design, and when not on the construction site, attend academic courses leading to a GED or high school diploma.

Habitat and Goodwill want to make the current plan into a replicable model for affordable green construction in Omaha. The current home is slated for completion in the spring of 2011, when YouthBuild Omaha students will then begin a study of the home's cost savings for the new homeowners.

YouthBuild Omaha and the LEED project are funded in part by the US Department of Labor. The architecture firm HDR has also been a critical partner in designing the home. Other partners include: Peter Kiewit Foundation, Wal-Mart and Lincoln Financial Foundation.