Entergy Corporation : Dream Build Honors Martin Luther King, Jr.

Community volunteers help Finley family of five build home

JACKSON, Miss. - "I have a dream," said Martin Luther King, Jr. in his famous 1963 speech. Each January, we honor King and his dream of a better world with a national day of service.

For employees of Entergy Mississippi, Entergy Nuclear, Irby Company and Mint and Julep restaurants; students from Mississippi College School of Law and Boy Scout Troop 1 that means helping the Finley family pursue the American dream of home ownership.

"Takashika Finley is a mother of three children ages 12 and under, and caretaker of her mother," said Liz Brister, external affairs manager for Entergy Mississippi, Inc. "She and her family were renting a home, but high crime and poor living conditions made her fearful for her family's safety and health.

"To get them out of the situation, Finley moved them in with her sister in a three-bedroom, one-bath house with 15 other family members," she said. "To say it's a crowded living situation is an understatement!"

Entergy and Irby employees and the students will honor King's legacy by helping the Finley family and Habitat for Humanity/Metro Jackson, Inc. build a three-bedroom, two-bath house on Garden Circle in Jackson. Mint Restaurant employees will keep the hard-working volunteers well fed. The Boy Scouts will do their part by keeping it green-they will help workers properly sort waste, keep the site clean and take trash to the recycling center at the end of the day. Volunteers will work Friday and Saturday, January 13 and 14; Monday, January 16, which is MLK Day, and Friday and Saturday, January 20 and 21.

"Entergy employees have a long relationship with Habitat for Humanity," said Brister. "Our employees really love the sense of community created by these builds, and everyone enjoys the immediate satisfaction of seeing a house quickly rise from the build site."

"We're especially glad to have so many partners working with us, and hope this will be the first project of many where we volunteer together," she added.

Habitat homes are not free. Families must provide 250 hours of sweat equity and assume a zero-interest mortgage loan. Finley, a Comcast employee, will be working alongside the volunteers to complete the home for her, her mother, Aletoca; 12-year-old Tysheana, 10-year-old Quavion and four-year-old LaQuarrious.

"I'm very excited about having my kids under one roof in a permanent, stable place where I can raise them according to my values," said Finley. "This home will be affordable, too, which means I'll have money left to meet my family's other needs."

"My kids ask me every night when we're going to start building our house, and I tell them, 'On Friday, January 13. That may not be the luckiest day, but it's a good day for us'," she said. "We are all ready to move!"

Entergy Mississippi, Inc. provides electricity to more than 435,000 customers in 45 counties. It is a subsidiary of Entergy Corporation. Entergy is an integrated energy company engaged primarily in electric power production and retail distribution operations. Entergy owns and operates power plants with approximately 30,000 megawatts of electric generating capacity, and it is the second-largest nuclear generator in the United States. Entergy delivers electricity to 2.7 million utility customers in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas.