Eleven-year-old Catherine Green colours pictures of houses for four our more hours a week. She’s working to help her family become the next Habitat for Humanity homeowners in Nanaimo.

"She simply doesn't stop," Linda Smith, Habitat’s Executive Director, told me. "All this summer she has come in at 8:30 every Thursday morning, and she doesn't stop colouring until 12:30. She just puts her head down and goes for it."

During the same four hours, her mother, Sandy, volunteers next door in the Habitat for Humanity ReStore.

Sandy and her daughters, Catherine (11), Brianne (14), and Elana (17) -- all honour students – will soon be moving into the fourth Habitat for Humanity home in the city. Located on Wekesiah across from Nanaimo District Secondary School, the home is currently being built by volunteers.

Brianne hopes to become a dentist and Elana plans on entering the nursing program at Malaspina in the fall of 2005. Her long-range plans include doing mission work in a third world country.

As part of their partnership agreement, Habitat families must put in hundreds of "sweat equity" hours working on their own home, other people's homes, in the Habitat for Humanity ReStore or office, or on a number of other Habitat projects.

Sandy and her older daughters have worked on a variety of different tasks while Catherine has focused on colouring pictures of literally hundreds of houses, which will be used during Habitat for Humanity's Carpenters' Capers Dinner Auction on October 2 at the Coast Bastion Inn. (Tickets are just $35 and are available at 758-8078.)

Catherine is motivated to put in extra-long hours colouring because she can't wait to move into their new house and into her very own room.

For the past two and a half years, Catherine has shared a bedroom with her mother.

"She has always been a caring, giving child," her mom told me. "She always goes out of her way to help other kids at school, and she often makes my bed and leaves a little stuffed animal and a note saying, 'I love you mom'.

Sandy sleeps on a mattress that she stores under Catherine's bed during the day to help her daughter feel that in a way she really has her own room.

"My kids are so great," Sandy continued, “and they deserve the very best I can give them. I've been married twice and the decisions I made have affected them. So having our own home is a way for me to make it up to them, and to give them stability in their lives. We won't have to worry about moving or having the rent go up so that I can't afford to get them the little extras. It will be wonderful."

When I asked Sandy how getting this home will affect her family over the next five years, she seemed stuck for an answer, but then, two days later, when I stopped by to take Catherine's picture, she had was able to answer my question.

"Until we were chosen as the next Habitat family, I never thought that far into the future,” she told me. “I just did my best to get by day-to-day. Now I will be able to plan and the first thing I want to do is save to help Elana through Malaspina ... and then Brianne is just three years behind!"

There's no doubt that Habitat for Humanity will make a huge difference for this family. Likewise this family will be good for the organization. As Sandy and I chatted, she never let five minutes go by without acknowledging all of the Habitat volunteers, and I'm sure she and her children will be part of that volunteer corps for years to come.