On Sunday evening, when former president of the US and Nobel Peace laureate Jimmy Carter with wife Rosalynn in tow set foot at Malavali village near Lonavla, nearly 45 km from Pune, it was a dream come true for the Carter family. For, 23 years after he had approached the then prime minister Indira Gandhi seeking permission for a global non-profit organisation Habitat for Humanity to work in Indian projects, on Monday, Carter and wife will work side by side with 2,000 volunteers to build 100 homes in this village.
“India has always played a big role in the life of the Carter family. Thirtyeight years ago my mother Lilian had come here to work in Vikhroli village as a volunteer for Peace Corps to improve the lives of people,” Carter recalled.
“And now after 23 years, we have been honoured to build homes in this great country,” he said, inaugurating the Jimmy Carter Work Project for 2006.
Carter and wife, who will be here for a week, said they were grateful to the homeowner families and the volunteers. “They have done a heroic job of changing this monsoon lake into a wonderful building site. We will be honoured to work side by side with you volunteers and members of the homeowner families to complete this project. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts,” he said.
Carter and wife will also visit Chennai and Thailand to oversee the building of homes for tsunami-ravaged people. Since 1984, Carter has been giving one week in year for the cause.
The former president of the US also shared some anecdotes on his experience while assisting the volunteers of the Habitat to build houses. “We had the opportunity to build houses at a demilitarised region between North Korea and South Korea. A few months later, the US President George W Bush said he is going to visit the place. I joked to my wife, see that’s why we have build houses there.”
He also recalled how 13,000 volunteers had built 293 houses at the Philippines.
But India still ranks high on Habitat’s priority list. “Every year, for the next five years, we at the HFH India will use a major event like this week’s Jimmy Carter Work Project, as a catalyst to draw attention to the plight of millions of people in India who lack affordable, decent and safe homes,” HFH’s India CEO Peter Selvarajan said.
Their target is to provide 50,000 homes to people over the next five years.
“Every person, who is a part of this project will be enriched this week by working with the homeowner families who are helping to improve their lives and the lives of the others in the community,’’ HFH International CEO Jonathan Reckford said.
HFH uses a micro-finance concept where homeowners save one-third of the cost of the house as a non-governmental organisation (NGO) or corporate partner contributes one-third and HFH invests the remaining one-third. A homeowner would have to shell out only “Rs 75,000, whereas the cost per unit is Rs 2.25 lakh, inclusive of facilities like electricity, water, sanitation, infrastructure etc,” Joseph Scaria, director, Habitat Resource Centre had earlier said. Of this, Rs 25,000 needs to be a down payment, while the remaining can be repaid over a 7-8 year period as an interest-free loan. Most of the homeowners have taken a loan for this purpose.
The beneficiaries are selected based on the family’s level of need, willingness to become partners in the programme and their ability to repay the loan. HFH has partnered with Abhinav Co-operative Credit Society — a women’s self-help group — to select beneficiaries for the Jimmy Carter Work Project.