A Benicia woman who has sung for VOENA and volunteered in Canvasback Missions’ medical clinics is taking on another cause.

Recent college graduate Kenya Wright is bicycling across the country to raise awareness for the need for affordable housing.

Wright, 21, who just wrapped up her senior year at Brown University, in Providence, R.I., said in an interview Thursday she has many big dreams, such as working to stop climate change around the world.

Her parents, Randy and Linda Wright, have encouraged Kenya to volunteer, and the young woman has done so as a tutor and a volunteer music and dance teacher.

She became a VOENA singer in kindergarten and continued until she graduated from Benicia High School in 2011. She returned to perform with the singing group that fall, and was a chaperone for the young singers when they traveled to the London Olympics in 2012.

VOENA helped spur Wright’s interest in overseas travel.

“We sang songs in over 20 languages and have traveled to China, Italy, Mexico, South Africa, London, Ireland and the White House,” she said.

While at Brown, Wright has been a publicity assistant for the theater department and a student caller for the university’s Annual Fund. Currently, she’s a curriculum developer and teacher’s assistant for the West African Dance class at the Ivy League university.

Last summer, she participated for the second time in Canvasback Missions’ Ear, Nose and Throat Clinics in Majuro, in the Marshall Islands, marking her seventh year of involvement with the nonprofit. Its founder, Jacque Spence, was a neighbor who hired Wright for an office job when she was just 14.

The trips have led her to hope to visit more Pacific islands to examine climate change adaptation.

Her undergraduate experience at Brown, where she concentrated on entrepreneurship, energy and the environment, also led Wright to study climate change in Vietnam, Morocco and Bolivia.

It was while she was in Morocco that a friend introduced her to Bike & Build, organizer of cross-country bicycle trips to help affordable housing groups. Wright applied for this summer’s trip and was accepted.

“I care about the affordable housing cause simply because it is a basic human right that far too many people struggle to achieve,” she said.

“My family has history with the homeowning struggle for African Americans in the Bay Area,” she said. In fact, one of her great-uncles, William D. Martin, won a significant legal battle in 1966 that led to drastic improvements in homeownership for African Americans, she said.

“My relatives continue to work to ensure fair prices and processes for those in the Bay Area,” Wright said.

She, too, has become involved directly, working on construction projects, helping homeless people and improving their homes’ energy efficiency.

“Now that everyone can legally own homes, the problem lies in affordability. I am excited to contribute to this essential need for people all around America,” Wright said.

She said affordable housing “is a major concern in the United States,” and noted that there are few places where a full-time minimum-wage worker can rent a one-bedroom home at a fair market rate.

By 2012, nearly 41 million households, or about a third of families and individuals, were paying excessive shares of their income for housing, and 636,000 had no homes, Wright said. San Francisco was one of two cities she said have the least affordable housing. Brooklyn, N.Y., is the other.

That, she said, is why she rides.

Wright has received a scholarship to pay her personal expenses, such as the bicycle, gear and other costs, but she needs to raise at least $4,500 before she can start the trip this month.

That money will support affordable housing organizations throughout the country.

Donors may sponsor by the mile, by the day or by each state, and can give through the Bike & Build website.

As she travels, Wright will write a travel blog at gtgbrb.blogspot.com.

She will be traveling with a group of about 30 riders, and they’ll begin June 13 in New Haven, Conn., riding to their next town. At each stop the riders will have the opportunity to talk at town hall meetings about affordable housing, particularly how it impacts each community they visit.

In some cities, the riders will get a chance to help in the construction of affordable homes.

The ride goes through Allentown and Harrisburg, Pa., and Cumberland, Md., in June.

In July the riders will stop in Louisville, Ky.; Springfield, Ill.; Lawrence, Kan.; and Loveland and Salida, Colo.

The August schedule, the last month of the trip, takes them through Montrose, Colo; Moab and Green River, Utah; Sparks, Nev.; and into California, where they’ll stop at Stockton and Palo Alto and end the ride at Half Moon Bay on Aug. 24.

“My parents are very excited,” Wright said.

“They’re nervous, because biking can be dangerous, but they like when I volunteer.”

Bike & Build has been raising money for 10 years through such events as the cross-country ride in which Wright will participate. The organization has donated $4.5 million to housing groups that use the money for projects that are executed by young adults.

Those interested in donating to Kenya Wright’s ride may visit the website www.bikeandbuild.org/rider/8046.