Mumbai, Dec 30 (PTI) For 100 low-income families near Lonavala, around 80 km from Mumbai, Jimmy Carter was a godsend as he had helped build their houses in 2006.
For a week in October that year, the former US President and his wife Rosalynn worked alongside the families and about 2,000 international and local volunteers to build homes at Patan village near Lonavala, a popular hill station.
The volunteers included Hollywood actor Brad Pitt and Bollywood actor John Abraham.
The houses were built under the aegis of NGO Habitat for Humanity. Carter volunteered his carpentry skills and raised money to boost the organization’s profile.
Since 1984, Carter donated one week of his time – and his building skills – every year to the organization.
Carter, who left the White House in 1980 at the end of his first and only term as US President, had said in an interview that his mother Lillian joined the Peace Corps when she was 67 and worked in a leper colony near Mumbai.
“She was very near Bombay in a little village called Vikhroli,” the former President had recalled, referring to what is now a central suburb of the megapolis.
Carter’s association with Habitat began in 1984 when he donated his carpentry and manual labour skills for a week to renovate a building in New York.
The NGO, which helps homeowners build homes alongside volunteers, was founded in Americus, Georgia near Carter’s hometown of Plains.
Habitat homes are not give-aways. It chooses beneficiaries from applicants depending on their ability to repay low-interest loans and the amount of sweat equity they can put into the projects.
The Georgia peanut farmer, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize after he left office, died Sunday after a prolonged illness. He was 100 years old, the longest-lived former president in his country’s history. PTI VT
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