Habitat World Online

Habitat's first volunteer, Clive Rainey has been with the ministry since its beginning.

First Habitat volunteer and longtime staff member Clive Rainey celebrates 30 years of service

By Susan Stevenson

Dodo Watts was a third-generation British actress. Birt Rainey was a G.I. far from his home in Ellaville, Ga. They fell in love and married.

From this international romance came twin boys born in East Sussex 60 years ago, one of whom was Clive Rainey, director of community relations for Habitat for Humanity International, who celebrated 30 years with the organization on April 1.

Rainey has told the story of Habitat to audiences for the past three decades. He frequently speaks about Habitat on college campuses, for affiliate gatherings and before service organizations all over the world, inspiring affiliates to build more houses faster.

When Rainey was a student at Georgia Southwestern University, he was looking for something to do on weekends. Other students "told me on weekends they went to the farm," Rainey explains. The farm was Koinonia, and "it was an exciting place to be."

Rainey had taught in Liberty County, Ga., near Fort Stewart. His students were African-American; most of them direct descendants of Africans from Lower Zaire. Just back from Africa, Millard Fuller--who, along with Koinonia founder Clarence Jordan, developed the concept of "partnership housing" that would lead to Habitat for Humanity--wanted to show Rainey his slides of Zaire, and Rainey was interested because of his former students.

This was before Habitat was officially founded in 1976. As Fuller showed the slides, he kept announcing, "I know the next volunteer to go to Africa is in this room." Several years later, Rainey had built houses in Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo; helped construct the first building in Uganda after Idi Amin, a two-room house for a widow; and spent time as Habitat's first area director for Africa.

"Life was very whatever it was," says Rainey of the early days of Habitat in Americus, Ga. "It was exciting, but very low-key." Habitat workers would get up in the morning, he explains, and do what had to be done. A half day at an old upright typewriter writing a newsletter for about 3,000 supporters could be followed by working on frozen pipes under a house.

What does he think of this movement and his 30 years helping build it? At one house dedication, the new homeowner told Rainey that Habitat wasn't building in the Ukrainian town that he and his wife had left for America. The homeowner's old pastor had asked for help with a Habitat connection. Rainey offered help and a business card.

"[The homeowner] cried. The family, friends he left behind would have hope for decent houses," Rainey explains. At that moment, Rainey says, he started to "realize that we had become something intangible. We had become hope."

Susan Stevenson is the editorial manager of Habitat for Humanity International.