Image by Knight Workforce Performance and Development Manager Tom Pitmon.

Knight Foundation employees are in the final days of the Biloxi build, and the Habitat for Humanity Web site quotes a few of us in yesterday’s daily diaries section.

Biloxi – Roofing isn’t the only hot job. Crews of twos and threes worked at each house to put insulation in the attics – a job that left volunteers sweating through their t-shirts. Pilar Guzman Zavala, 29; Camila Domonoske, 19, and Julie Brooks, 40, handled the attic insulation at 607 Roy Street Wednesday. The trio earned the sobriquet, “The Attic Elves” for their ability to navigate the tight space.

Zavala and Brooks are both employees of the Knight Foundation, this year’s platinum sponsor for the Carter Work Project. “We’re getting a workout up there,” Brooks said. She described the tightrope walking they have to do to avoid stepping on the drywall, and to navigate the beams as some “quality gymnastics exercise.”

Pascagoula —Jennifer Hebert hasn’t lived on the Gulf Coast since she was a girl, but her first home was in Lafayette, La., and one of her parents is from New Orleans. “I watched the hurricanes happening on TV,” said the South Florida resident, “and I saw the devastation happening to my people. I’m a city girl, but I had to come out here, come back home, to do my part.” — Shala Carlson

Pascagoula — Volunteer Paula Ellis of Miami, Fla., has been conducting an experiment since the roof went up on the Habitat house where she is volunteering this week: what’s the easiest beverage to toss up to her fellow workers? “I do better with the Gatorade,” she said, after a few failed attempts to get a water bottle up to the roof. “Gatorade has a better throw weight.” — Shala Carlson

Pascagoula—Jessica Goldfin, a 23-year-old first-time Habitat volunteer from Miami, Fla., was well warned about the infectious enthusiasm that runs rampant at the Carter project. But still she succumbed.

“I’ve got Habititis,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. Her first time volunteering won’t be her last. — Teresa K. Weaver

Best wishes to all of the Habitat volunteers this week; here at Knight Foundtion HQ, we look forward to more stories, pictures, and video (posted here next week) upon your return.

The building continues in Biloxi at the Habitat for Humanity’s 25th Annual Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Work Project, and Knight Foundation colleagues are sending back pictures and video of the first few days.

For most of the houses, Journalism Associate Jessica Goldfin writes, the homeowner is working as part of the build crew, “which is really inspiring and cool.”

For the house Jessica is working on, the future homeowner Christine commented on Monday, “Wow, this is my bathroom,” and, later, “it is starting to look like my home.”

Builders are also leaving messages for the homeowners on the structure itself; so the walls will talk–or whisper, perhaps, of the efforts volunteers made this week and their best wishes for the homeowners.

Many of our number were able to meet Jimmy Carter, including Knight Foundation president and CEO Alberto Ibargüen:

(video by VP of Communications Marc Fest)

And, find out from our embedded blogger Anne Corriston what tool beginning Habitat volunteers use most, and what she said to President Carter last night.

What would you write on the walls of a Habitat house you were helping build?

This week, thirty Knight Foundation employees are working alongside thousands of other volunteers constructing and rehabilitating houses in Biloxi, Mississippi.

Knight Foundation is directly sponsoring eight houses, and we’ll be posting video and updates from those eight houses all this week.

One Knight Foundation program director, Anne Corriston, is blogging her experience here; in the past few days, she has been moved by messages of hope, impressed by veteran Habitat volunteer skillsets, and wary of pig boots.

Below, Leah Witmer, who manages special Habitat projects in the Gulf Coast region, describes her job and how excited she is about thirty new houses.

Have you volunteered with Habitat for Humanity?

Leave tips and encouragement for the build crews in the comments below.