Students in the North Iowa Area Community College Building Trades program were hard at work Thursday putting up the walls for a Habitat for Humanity house in the Madison Heights Development in Mason City.

It's part of a tradition dating back many years in which future construction workers learn skills by working on affordable homes for North Iowans.

Melissa Schoneberg, executive director of Habitat for Humanity of North Central Iowa, said that due to the partnership, the students "don't have to just mockup walls and then take them apart in the shop."

Habitat works in with qualifying families, who receive no-interest loans to purchase their own homes. Each adult in the family is required to put in 250 hours of "sweat equity."

The NIACC students have worked on different parts of a number

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