Since 1984, President Jimmy Carter has led an annual week-long work project. This year, he's headed to Lonavala, India.

Jimmy Carter Project in India Plans 100 Homes
Worldwide Volunteers Ready to Go to Work Oct. 29-Nov. 3

by Bill Walsh

Essay Contest Winner: A Distant Mirror

As the monsoon season ends, some 2,000 Habitat for Humanity volunteers will arrive in Lonavala, India, 125 kilometers east of Mumbai, as part of the 2006 Jimmy Carter Work Project in a display of worldwide cooperation.

"This will be a truly global JCWP," says Habitat's senior vice president for communications Chris Clarke, "given that so many volunteers are coming from the Asia/Pacific region, from Europe and locally from India. Habitat programs outside the United States have strengthened and grown to the extent that they could fill all the available volunteer slots without any volunteers from North America."

Volunteers will build 100 simple, decent dwellings--one-story, attached duplexes, or twin units, actually--on a tract of open land that has been purchased by Habitat for Humanity. It is near the railroad tracks that offer relatively easy access to Mumbai, and provides room for an additional 84 homes for future construction after the army of JCWP volunteers has retreated.

The houses will be concrete-floor, two-room affairs. Habitat is working with Abhinav Cooperative Credit Society (ACCS)--a non-profit group that specializes in microfinancial arrangements with women, many of whom are strong candidates for Habitat homeownership--to select the families that will make new lives in the homes. Like Habitat, ACCS is based on the principles of cooperation, mutual help, democratic decision-making and open membership. (For more details on homeowner selection, see the enhanced version of this story on our Web page, www.habitat.org/hw.)

India's frequent appearances on the nightly news and in the daily paper most often highlight its booming, high-tech economy these days, and there is much to celebrate in the subcontinent's increasing participation in the global economy. But there is another side to the story. The World Bank recently agreed to lend $9 billion to the Indian government to help ease the poverty burden of an astonishing 350 million people, mostly rural dwellers, who have not been able to partake of the boom.

Selecting India as the site for the 23rd JCWP was a natural for President Carter in another regard: His mother Lillian Carter joined the Peace Corps when she was 67 and served for two years in India. She was sent to New Delhi, then on to a colony about 30 miles outside of Bombay--now Mumbai--where she worked as a family planner and nurse in the local clinic.

Habitat for Humanity began its work in India 15 years later (1983) and has built more than 12,500 homes there.

In addition to its usual activities in India, Habitat is continuing to work on the hard-hit coastal areas of Tamil Nadu, south of the state capital of Chennai, where an estimated 10,000 people were killed by the Dec. 26, 2004, tsunami. President Carter will visit the community during the 2006 work project.

This JCWP is the first large-scale event of india-BUILDS, an ambitious five-year campaign organized by Habitat for Humanity India. The program aims to provide decent shelter for 250,000 people in India by 2010 through mobilizing 1 million volunteers and raising sufficient money for a sustainable US$50 million revolving housing fund.

The JCWP will take place the week of Oct. 29-Nov. 3. Among the volunteers will be the winner of Habitat World's essay contest.