Lansing — Beneath the canopy of trees shading Lansing's idyllic West Shiawassee Street, children ride bikes, and the smell of freshly cut grass lingers in the air on a warm summer evening. For Kindra Jackson and four of her five children, this is home.

Jackson has lived at 824 W. Shiawassee St. for five years, and the house is showing its age. The formerly white paint on the exterior is losing its brilliance, cracking and peeling on the underside of her front porch roof.

Exterior home renovations can be too expensive for many homeowners, leaving the fate of the home to the mercy of nature - unless someone lends a helping hand.

Jackson and two other Lansing homeowners have found a way to combat nature's abuse. The three homes were selected by the Greater Lansing Association of Realtors, or GLAR, Curb Appeal Makeover project, a part of the association's Centennial Celebration. The GLAR gathered a total of $30,000, spending $10,000 to paint, repair roofs, driveways, porches, woodwork and landscaping at each Lansing home. The renovation of the three homes began Thursday.

When Jackson found out her home was one of the three chosen out of a pool of 26 contestants, she said she was stunned.

"My heart was pounding - I didn't expect to win," she said. "I was really impressed they chose me."

Jackson's commitment to children extends beyond her family and into her professional life. She is an early child development professional and works with children in Lansing. She earned her Child Development Associate accreditation through the Council for Professional Recognition, a Washington D.C.-based nonprofit organization.

Jackson is excited about the new look of her family home.

"It's changing the exterior of my house to where it looks nice with the rest of the neighborhood," Jackson said.

Three blocks west and north of Jackson's home lives Simon Ajak, at 721 N. Chestnut St., who also was selected to receive the exterior makeover.

Like Jackson, Ajak was skeptical his home would be selected, but when he heard the good news, he reacted like anyone would.

"I was so happy and so appreciative," he said. "I was not expecting to win something, but it was lucky."

Born in Sudan, Ajak was forced to flee his home and migrate to Ethiopia as a refugee when the Second Sudanese Civil War broke out in 1983, ravaging his country.

He was forced to leave Ethiopia because of the nation's own civil war in 1990. He relocated to Kenya. Unlike millions of people in these war-torn nations, Ajak was able to escape alive, yet his troubles were far from over. Kenya posed its own set of challenges.

"There were no jobs at all," he said. "By that time, we were looking for work, but there was nothing."

His fortune changed in 2001, when he was able to come to the United States along with approximately 3,800 Sudanese refugees known as the "Lost Boys" because of a U.N. program that helped grant them refugee status in the United States.

He is in his mid-20s, but he does not know his exact age because he had no record of it as a refugee.

When he immigrated to the U.S., an official with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (formerly U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service) assigned him the age of 21 because of his looks.

Ajak's Chestnut Street home is the first house he has lived in, much less owned, and he says the renovation is a blessing.

"I really appreciate the opportunity to move forward, and I thank God for that," he said. "It was God's work."

A short drive away from Ajak's home into Lansing's east side, one can find the home of Julie Briles, a mother to three children who is engaged to fiance Brian Powers.

Briles, her three children and Powers never lived in a house of their own. They always lived in apartments until May last year when they moved into at home at 1301 Taft St.

By sheer coincidence, the address of Briles' mother also happened to be 1301. Her new address became her lucky number when she won $2,700 playing the lottery with the number 1301 in the spring of 2006.

The money was just the icing on the cake for Briles, who said the best thing was seeing the reaction of her children when she told them they had a house of their own.

"This is the first house they've ever lived in. They've never had their own bikes, their own yard," she said. "The looks on the kids' faces were priceless."

While thrilled to have a home to call her own, Briles saw her house was in need of work.

"Our house is old," she said. "It needed a lot of work, but we don't have the money to do what we would like to do."

Briles' springtime luck came through again, this time on her daughter's birthday, when she found out her home was selected to receive the exterior makeover from the GLAR.

"When they came out to my house, they had balloons and banners," she said. "I turned around and started crying."

Briles said the best part of the makeover is what will happen when the work is done.

"Just to look at the house after it's done, that's something we'll never forget," she said.

"We're so thankful, more than thankful."

To read more about the GLAR Curb Appeal Makeover project, see Monday's edition of The State News.