GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – Students show off a car at Northeast Wisconsin Technological College Sunday.
“It’s nice to know that we actually put a lot of time and effort into this vehicle, and for the use it is going to have. It’s going to be good for the community,”
Austin Parma is an auto body student at NWTC and spoke to WLUK.
Each year students with NWTC’s Auto Body Program repair a vehicle, which is later donated to a local charity.
This year Parma says students agreed, The Freedom House in Green Bay, a homeless shelter for families, was a good fit.
“It was brought up by one of our fellow students in the club, that decided the Freedom House would be a great candidate to donate the vehicle”
Parma helped work on the Dodge mini-van. He says the finished product took a little elbow grease, and extra time outside of class.
“It needed brakes, needed to change some of the fluids, and actually the cool thing all this was done off classroom time.”
Tameika Hughes-Foote is the Program Director at Freedom House. She says the gesture goes beyond words, “It is a blessing.”
Hughes-Foote says one of the major struggles for families trying to get back on their feet is transportation
“A lot of our families depend on public transportation, and one of the burdens of that is trying to find a job”
She says the car will be more than just a means of transportation, but a symbol of hope.
“For them to know, really know that there are other people out there that want to come a long side and support you, so you are not alone”
NWTC’s Auto Body Program has been donating repaired vehicles to local charities for more than 10 years.
