He Put Habitat in the Spotlight.

In his 100 mortal years, President James Earl Carter profoundly touched and improved countless lives. Although Jimmy Carter was the 39th President of the United States, perhaps his greatest legacy will be as the public face of Habitat volunteerism. Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter devoted so much of their personal time and energy to Habitat for Humanity that many people incorrectly believe the Habitat for Humanity was “Jimmy Carter’s organization.”

In fact, what started as a community home building program on Koinonia Farm in the early nineteen seventies caught the attention of Millard and Linda Fuller. Millard Fuller had become a self-made millionaire by age 29, but he and his wife wanted to do something meaningful with their fortune.  Together with Koinonia Farm founder Clarence Jordan, the Fullers developed the idea of “Partnership Housing.”

Subsequently, Millard and Linda sold off their fortune and took the building program to Zaire. There they engaged the community to join together and create permanent, decent, healthy homes where each future homeowner had personal sweat equity in creating their new home. From that effort, in 1976, the Fullers founded Habitat for Humanity International.

In 1984, just four years out of the US presidency, the Carters joined in on a Habitat for Humanity project for the first time. The Carters asked to help renovate a blighted building in New York City’s East Village. The early images of a recent, former president, humbly wearing a hard hat and pounding nails, the most basic of human efforts, became an inspiration across the globe. Stories quickly spread that Jimmy Carter was the first to arrive on the job in the morning and the last to leave at night. He even brought his own tools.

His involvement immediately brought Habitat for Humanity from a little-known concept to an international movement. Communities all across the country followed the partnership housing concept of Habitat, and local Habitat for Humanity affiliates formed. Habitat for Humanity Grand Traverse Region was formed in 1986, and completed our first home with partner Shelly Thomas in 1988.

In the decades since the Carters first walked on to a worksite, they have been the most famous Habitat for Humanity volunteers. Throughout the country and across the world, there have been “Carter Work Projects,” where communities come together and 100s even 1,000s of volunteers build homes or renovate communities, sometimes completing entire blocks in just seven days.

Although Carter quickly became the Iconic face of Habitat for Humanity, seen in countless photographs with volunteers and new homeowners, both Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter continued to be working volunteers on Habitat homes. Well into his 90s, Carter was volunteering on jobsites.

Although Jimmy Carter’s accomplishments are many, his greatest legacy is showing that everyone can volunteer their abilities, however limited, to help change lives.