Millard Fuller Interview (page: 2 / 9) Founder, Habitat for Humanity International	Print Interview

You carried on the work at Koinonia Farm after Clarence Jordan died. It sounds as though you had created a supportive infrastructure.

Millard Fuller: Well, we did carry it on, and we stayed there and worked for the next five years almost, building houses, running these various other enterprises. And it was during that time that Linda and I decided that it was the housing which was really catching on.

Linda, why do you think that was?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Linda Fuller: We got to know the families, and we would go visit them and see the horrible shacks they were living in. No place to cook, no place to go to the bathroom. You could see through the floor and could see through the roof. It was just deplorable how some people lived, and then to see the difference that it was making in their lives, especially the children. I helped organize a child development center because I saw that the kids really didn't have much to do, especially the preschoolers, during the day, and they really needed some social development. Some of the kids didn't even know what their name was, so it was just a real thrill to see the transformation in these families, and we thought, "Well, there's poverty housing in other parts of the world." So we wanted to see if the idea would work.

Could you see concrete results at first?

Millard Fuller: Well, it was slow at first. In fact, we were ridiculed quite a bit in the beginning stages.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Clarence Jordan was a Bible scholar, and he pointed out to us that in the scriptures, it's taught very clearly that you should not charge interest to the poor. In fact, it's not only in the Christian scriptures, but the three great monotheistic religions of the world are Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, and all three of the monotheistic religions of the world teach that you should not charge interest to the poor. And we were doing business with that concept of saying the poor can't afford anybody to be profiteering off of them. They need to be given a break, not become objects of charity, but we need to follow this ancient scriptural wisdom of taking the burden of interest away from them, and then they will be able to make it. Well, a lot of people in our area said, "Common sense will tell you that if you don't charge any interest, and you don't make any profit, it'll fail. This is a designed-to-fail program," and they said also, "It sounds communistic and un-American." And we said, "We got it out of the Bible," and they said, "But the Bible is for church and Sunday school. This is in the middle of the week. You can't expect to practice the Bible and what the Bible teaches in the middle of the week. This is the practical world."

[ Key to Success ] Perseverance

Did you run into a lot of opposition from the surrounding community?

Linda Fuller: Well, we were still living with the residue of what had happened 15, 20 years ago. When we would go into town, and people would ask us where we were from, and we'd say that we were living in Koinonia, that was like a curtain came down. We were still very much the enemy, so to speak, when we would go off the farm into the surrounding towns. So we had that to battle with, as well as the revolutionary ideas of what we were trying to do.

How did you get beyond it?

Millard Fuller: We got beyond it for two reasons. Number one, we felt very strongly that this was God's calling for us, that the idea was right. It squared up with the Bible, and the need was enormous. And secondly, we looked beyond the local area for support. The people in our local area were not going to support us, and they didn't. Years later -- and currently -- they are, but in the beginning, we got very little support, practically none from the immediate local area.

Was that a tough decision to walk away from that area?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Millard Fuller: It was not that we physically walked away. We would do mailings. We would write letters to people in Illinois and Indiana and Pennsylvania. They had been supporting Koinonia during that difficult period when they were under attack by the Ku Klux Klans and the White Citizens Council. So we had a mailing list of people who were sympathetic, and when we told them we had this new program, we were building houses for the poor, they were inclined to be supportive. And that was the beginning of what we did. And as we saw it working, and as Linda said, as we saw the tremendous transformation within these families, we began to think, can we make this work somewhere else? And that's when we actually contacted the Christian Church, Disciples of Christ, and asked them to sponsor us, and we moved to what was then Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. And we worked over there for three years, building houses, and it was during our time in Africa that we realized that this concept was indeed an idea that would have worldwide implications. And we came back to the United States in 1976 with the dream in our hearts of forming a worldwide work that would build houses for people all over the world and eventually eliminate all substandard housing.

[ Key to Success ] Vision

Was it very different doing this kind of work in Africa? Were there challenges?

Millard Fuller: Oh, were there challenges! I have written several books about the work. My first book was entitled Bokotola, which is the tale of the challenges. Everything in Africa was a challenge, but we were able to overcome the difficulties and get 114 houses started in the capital city of Equatorial Region, and then 90 miles to the south in the Village of Tondo, we started 300 more houses. And we came back in 1976 with those two programs underway and running, building houses in Central Africa.

During this period of time, how did your partnership work? What kinds of things did you handle, Linda?

Linda Fuller: We had four children by that time, ranging in ages from 13 down to a year-and-a-half. So there was just no way we could get around not having some household help. In fact, that was sort of expected of missionaries, because you can't go out and buy orange juice. You buy the oranges, and you have to have somebody to squeeze the orange juice. And then you have to buy your fresh foods at the market, and so you need somebody to go to the market. All we had was a manually operated washing machine and a clothes line, so we needed somebody to wash and do all the laundry. I had some help, and that freed me up to write letters, to do some fundraising and to keep in touch with people back in the States and Europe who were supporting us. Meanwhile, Millard was out seeing that the blocks were getting made, the houses going up. He dealt with the government, did all the things kind of outside the home.

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