(Building a fulfilling and productive lifemuch like build...)
Building a fulfilling and productive lifemuch like building a solid, durable houserequires the right materials on a solid foundation. Building Materials for Life, a collection of 40 inspiring essays, will motivate you to gather the resources you need to succeed in life. Learning from Failure, Overcoming Doubt, Forgiveness, and Peace Within are just a few of the raw materials that will ensure the success of your lifes building project.
(This collection of forty essays is a continuation of thos...)
This collection of forty essays is a continuation of those in Volume 1. Volume 2 continues the series with essays on topics like direction in life, hope, urgency, sorrow, true worth, and simple pleasures. As in the first volume, the topics deal with matters, both religious and secular, that arise in the lives of people everywhere. This second volume provides new building materials that are relevant to issues people face, regardless of station in life, on a regular basis.
(This collection of 40 essays completes the series Buildin...)
This collection of 40 essays completes the series Building Materials for Life, which includes three volumes and a total of 120 essays. In volumes I and II, Millard Fuller writes about topics such as learning from failure, staying healthy, prayer, worship, humble pride, hope, commitment, sorrow, and passion. Volume III includes essays on habits, inspiration, anger, trouble, humor, and thirty-five additional topics. As in the first two volumes, the essays deal with both religious and secular subjects, and everything is relevant to daily living. Fuller's fervent hope is that this volume and the entire series will be helpful to people in dealing with questions and issues that arise in life.
(Millard Fuller was the author of eleven books and awarded...)
Millard Fuller was the author of eleven books and awarded more than a dozen honorary doctorate degrees. He was a millionaire before age thirty and gave away his entire fortune before he was forty. He was a lawyer, a friend to presidents and world leaders, and an advocate for the poor. He was a husband, father, and grandfather. He was a tall, skinny kid with big ears from Lanett, Alabama. He was founder of Habitat for Humanity and the Fuller Center for Housing, both movements organized to eliminate substandard housing worldwide. Because of his unfailing vision and tenacity, Millard was responsible for sheltering more than a million people who had been living in poverty. When Millard left business at age thirty and turned his life in a new direction, he began writing an autobiography. He kept a journal in his desk and wrote in detail about his business and law ventures. In 1968, Millard finished the story of his journey from pauper to millionaire to home builder. In 1970, a publisher offered to consider the book at a later time, and the manuscript was packed away. His wife, Linda, occasionally would ask him about getting it published, but Millard would reply, Not now. Im too busy. This is that story.
No More Shacks!: The Daring Vision of Habitat for Humanity
(Tells the story behind Habitat for Humanity, a religious ...)
Tells the story behind Habitat for Humanity, a religious organization which works together with the poor to build them homes, and explains Habitat's plan to eliminate poverty housing throughout the world
Millard Dean Fuller was the founder and former president of Habitat for Humanity International, a nonprofit organization known globally for building houses for those in need, and the founder and former president of The Fuller Center for Housing.
Background
Fuller was born in Lanett, Alabama, on January 3, 1935, to Render and Estin Cook Fuller. As a child in Lanett, Alabama, he fattened and sold a pig, and then used the profits to buy and sell more small livestock. Certain experiences in his childhood also seemed to foreshadow his future. His mother, Estin Cook Fuller, died when he was three years old. His father, Render Alexander Fuller, later married Eunice Stephens. His father and stepmother had two sons and owned a grocery store. When Millard was about ten, his father bought 400 acres of farmland. An elderly couple lived in a small, rickety building on the land. One of the first things that Fuller's father did was to purchase materials and help the couple rebuild their home. In a way, this was Millard Fuller's first brush with destiny.
Education
Fuller continued his entrepreneurial ways in high school, raising beef cattle and earning enough to pay for his college expenses. He graduated from Auburn University in Auburn, Alabama, in 1957. He then went to law school at the University of Alabama. There, he was joined in his entrepreneurial ventures by friend and a fellow law student, Morris S. Dees, Jr. They ran a direct mail fund raising operation that sold items to schools and nonprofit organizations that they could in turn sell for more money to earn a profit. They also invested in real estate near the school, buying, repairing and then renting out a number of buildings. The two were earning up to $50, 000 a year between them before they even finished law school.
Fuller served a brief stint in the United States Army in 1960, the same year he received his LL. B. and passed the Alabama bar exam. Shortly thereafter, Fuller and Dees started their own law office in Montgomery, Alabama.
Career
Still, they put more energy into their entrepreneurial projects than their legal ones. They began publishing cookbooks, starting with Favorite Recipes of Home Economics Teachers (1963), and eventually started their own imprint, The Favorite Recipes Press. After two years, they folded their legal practice and were the largest publisher of cookbooks in the United States.
Things were not idyllic in the Fuller household, however. Fuller had a severe breathing disorder, among other health problems, which his doctors believed were stress-related. By November of 1964, he realized his symptoms had spread into his relationship with his family as well. His wife abruptly left for New York City to seek the counsel of a pastor and examine her commitment to her marriage. That event was Fuller's wake-up call. He followed his wife to New York and they had many soul-searching conversations.
The couple finally decided they would sell almost everything they owned. According to the Shirley Barnes of the Chicago Tribune, they returned home to Montgomery to "sell their home and give away their possessions, donating the proceeds to mission projects worldwide and church-related organizations. " Fuller also sold out his share of the business to his partner, and donated the proceeds of that sale to humanitarian causes. Dees eventually followed Fuller's lead; he sold the business and cofounded the Southern Poverty Law Center in 1971.
The Fuller family moved to Koinonia Farm, "Koinonia" taken from the Greek word for "fellowship. " The farm was founded in 1942 to be a space for racial equality and the common sharing of material goods. Residents had only enough possessions to support a meager lifestyle. Fuller met Clarence Jordan, a Bible scholar and author of "The Cotton Patch Gospel, " at the farm. Jordan was soon to wield great influence on Fuller's life.
In 1968, the Fuller family returned to Koinonia Farm to find it much-changed due to the harassment of neighbors. Only six inhabitants remained. Yet, the Fullers and Jordan resolved to rebuild the community somehow. They decided to start a housing partnership plan which would build small houses on plots of one half-acre each. The homes were to be built on a corner of the 1100 Koinonia parcel, and were to be sold to poor, rural families.
Fuller and Jordan began building in 1969, but unfortunately, Jordan was unable to see the project through. He passed away that same year. The Fullers and the other residents of Koinonia kept the dream alive, erecting 27 houses by mid-1972. Thirty-two homes were scheduled to be built on another site as well.
With the great success of the Koinonia community, the Fullers remembered the citizens of Mbandaka, Zaire, and decided to turn their attention in that direction. They spent six months preparing for their stay in Zaire, including three months in Paris to brush up on their French, which was the official language in Zaire. Fuller became the Church of Christ's Director of Development for the entire equatorial region of Zaire. First, his team constructed several small cement-block homes. While not luxurious by any means, they were far superior to the crumbling huts the natives had previously inhabited. The Fullers and their church group also raised money for prosthetic limbs and eyeglasses for the people of Mbandaka who desperately needed them.
In 1976, Fuller and his family returned to Koinonia Farm, determined to use their experience for even bigger and better purposes. As Fuller later commented to Barnes of the Chicago Tribune, "We want to make shelter a matter of conscience. We want to make it socially, politically, morally, and religiously unacceptable to have substandard housing and homelessness. " They founded Habitat for Humanity International, an organization which was to raise money and recruit volunteers to build homes for those in need. Government help would be enlisted for land acquisition and utilities, but the houses themselves were to be built from the donations of individuals.
Habitat homes are sold to families or individuals living in substandard housing who do not earn enough to buy a home through conventional channels. Some people mistakenly believe that Habitat gives people free homes, but as a Habitat volunteer commented to Christian Science Monitor, "We give away nothing but a great opportunity. " A small down-payment is required, as is a low monthly mortgage. The mortgage payments go into a fund that perpetuates the program. Additionally, all buyers invest a set number of labor hours in their own home. Fuller calls this "sweat equity" and points out that it builds a sense of pride and ownership in the individuals.
The organization has grown each year: in 1980, the organization had eleven U. S. affiliate groups and five projects running overseas. Fourteen years later, they boasted 1, 108 affiliate groups in the United States, plus 331 college chapters in North America, and over 160 affiliate groups in Hungary, Poland, Central and South America, the Caribbean, Africa, Asia and the Pacific region. In their first 15 years of operation, Habitat for Humanity built 10, 000 homes. They built their next 10, 000 homes in just two years' time, and a subsequent 10, 000 homes in the next year and a half. The organization ranked seventeenth in the home construction business in 1995.
The Fullers and Habitat have also generated support from people of all walks of life and every side of the political fence: former President Jimmy Carter and Rosalyn Carter, President Bill Clinton, leading Republican Newt Gingrich, actor Paul Newman, entertainer Bob Hope, and singer Amy Grant. The Fullers were joined by the Carters for a rebuilding effort of 20 homes in parts of riot-torn Los Angeles in 1995.
Fuller has written a number of books which both set forth his philosophies and detail the histories of his various contributions.
Achievements
Fuller was widely regarded as the leader of the modern-day movement for affordable housing and had been honored for his work in the United States and abroad.
Fuller was the recipient of numerous awards and more than 50 honorary degrees. In September 1996, United States President Bill Clinton awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor. In 1999, Fuller received the Award for Greatest Public Service Benefiting the Disadvantaged, an award given out annually by Jefferson Awards. In October 2005, the Fullers were honored by former President George H. W. Bush and the Points of Light Foundation with a bronze medallion embedded in The Extra Mile national monument in Washington, DC.
