‘Outside In’ boxes will help build Orange County Habitat home

It is hard to miss the giant boxes scattered around the quad, but most people haven’t considered what the wood the boxes are made of.

These boxes are for Outside In: 2015 Chancellor’s Innovation Summit today. The goal is to display creative solutions to problems affecting local and global communities.

The topics displayed on boxes range from “Listening to Oysters” to “Unlocking the Universe.”

The plywood used to build them will be donated to the UNC Habitat for Humanity, which is operated under the Habitat for Humanity of Orange County.

Dana McMahan, the creative expert behind the innovation summit, said each box features a different innovation from around campus.

“The boxes are a metaphor for the fact that the work that we do here on campus is really much more about affecting the outside world,” she said.

“That we’re here to put knowledge and resources together in a way that creates impact for some of the world’s biggest problems.”

McMahan said when raising awareness, it’s important to prevent waste, which is why the wood will be donated to UNC Habitat for Humanity.

Molly Bruce, co-president of the UNC Habitat for Humanity chapter, said they took an active role in building the boxes.

“Habitat was the only student organization that was asked to jump onto this project, which was pretty cool,” Bruce said.

UNC’s chapter got the chance to help tell the story of all the innovation projects, McMahan said.

“When you talk about the students who do that as a volunteer effort and are willing to sign on to things like this, it’s just extraordinary,” she said. “It’s magic, quite frankly. And that’s the kind of campus we are.”

Caroline Stewart, a senior in McMahan’s advertising campaigns class, said the class also helped make the project come together.

“Yesterday when we actually started putting the boxes together and we were all out here together, we were using power drills and doing carpentry work. We had Habitat for Humanity helping us and we could actually see our work coming together into a tangible product. That was definitely the coolest part.” Stewart said.

Bruce said building a house requires a lot more materials and types of wood than just the plywood being donated. But McMahan said the wood could still contribute a lot.

“There is certainly enough plywood here to satisfy the plywood needs of a house, maybe the plywood needs of more than one house,” McMahan said.

She said it is important to think of the wood not just as a recycling project, but also something that takes on a real life and will be transformed into a new structure.

“We have an opportunity to do something that in the end can be impactful for someone else’s life,” she said. “I think putting a roof over somebody’s head and having this plywood be part of what is holding up the roof, to me, is a very, kind of, spiritual thing.”

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