In 1968 a young American in his late twenties faced a personal crises. Trained as a lawyer, he had become a successful businessman. Married with young family, he was a millionaire, with a large house, an expensive car, a two thousand acre farm, two speedboats and a holiday home by the lake. He was making plans to achieve his next target, ten million dollars, when his wife came to him in the office and told him that she was about to leave. He reminded her of all he had given her. ‘What you haven’t given me’, she said, ‘is yourself’. She never saw him. He was devoting all his time to the business, and noe to the family. She no longer wanted to live like that.
The name of the young man was Millard Fuller. Shocked by this totally unexpected blow, he decided that if making money was destroying his marriage and family, he didn’t want to do it any more. He canelled his plans and took his wife and their children on holiday. They agreed that he would sell his share in the business and find another way to live. Visiting a friend in a Christian community in the American south, he heard that they were planning to build houses for poor rural families. He decided to join them and for five years he built homes. Then he went to Zaire, and built houses there. So was born one of the most successful voluntary projects of recent times: Habitat of humanity. Up to the present it has built 150, 000 houses throughout the world, including Britain. It has transformed lives in the most effective and practical way by giving people in poverty a ‘simple decent place to live’.
