About 70 members of the MIT community raised $6,000 for Habitat for Humanity by participating in a sleepout on chilly Kresge Oval Saturday night (May 6). A matching grant of $5,000 swelled the total for the evening to $11,000.
On April 2, the MIT chapter of Habitat for Humanity raised $1,420 to kick off a drive to raise $80,000 by the end of the year. Each person who delivered $35 in pledges Saturday night received a free T-shirt.
A bagel and orange juice breakfast was provided on Sunday morning by LaVerde's.
Speakers included John Judge, executive director of Habitat for Humanity in Boston; Yvette Baden, who has lived in a Habitat home in Boston since 1994; Marc Goldfinger, contributing editor for Spare Change; and Harry Kennedy Muller, a counselor with the Salvation Army in Cambridge.
Habitat for Humanity International, founded in 1976, has built more than 85,000 houses around the world, providing more than 425,000 people with safe, decent and affordable shelter. It is a nonprofit, ecumenical Christian housing ministry.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on May 10, 2000.