by Rey Ramsey
As many of you perhaps have heard by now, we have had a change in the leadership of our organization. What has not changed at all is our commitment to keeping those in need of housing and hope front and center of this ministry.
As I write to you today, we are busy finalizing plans for the 2005 Jimmy Carter Work Project in Michigan in June, as well as for the celebration that will mark the dedication of the 200,000th house built by Habitat for Humanity. We are on pace for that milestone house to be built in Knoxville, Tenn., in August 2005. By that time, fully 1 million people will be living in Habitat homes.
In all that we do, we will be building on the vision of Millard Fuller, Habitat for Humanity's founder and longtime president. With sadness in late January, after nearly a year of tensions and negotiations, the executive committee of Habitat for Humanity's International Board of Directors voted to end Mr. Fuller's tenure at the helm of the organization. That decision was preceded last fall by the appointment of Paul Leonard, a longtime Habitat volunteer, as chief executive officer on an interim basis. A search committee, with Jimmy Carter as the honorary chair, has begun the process of identifying a permanent successor to Mr. Fuller.
Our organization pays tribute to Millard Fuller's vision, dedication, and tremendous accomplishments. He not only founded Habitat for Humanity, but went on to devote nearly three decades of his life to serving those in need of decent housing. Our gratitude to him and his wife Linda is lasting and deep.
As Paul Leonard--a former minister and retired real estate and construction industry executive--takes up the mantle of leadership, we are confident that his experience and dedication to Habitat's mission will ensure a smooth transition and continued focus on service to families in need of housing.
It is Habitat for Humanity's focus on service and mission that truly unites us. From its earliest days, this organization never has been about one person, but rather about what all of us can do, working together, to build houses and hope with families in desperate need of decent, affordable places to live. Habitat for Humanity, through autonomous affiliates in some 3,000 communities, has been providing that helping hand since the organization's founding in 1976. We will continue to do so.
Although this is a time of transition, our mission is unchanged; our core values are unchanged; our ultimate goal--a world in which everyone has, at minimum, a simple, decent, affordable place to live--is unchanged.
You can be assured that every one of us directly involved in Habitat for Humanity is absolutely committed to that mission. We are committed to building; to ongoing wise stewardship of all resources entrusted to us; to promoting dignity and reconciliation for all people; to building, in short, a better world through better housing.
In closing, I want to thank you for your past support. And I want to thank you in advance for the support I know you will continue to give this ministry that has so positively touched so many hundreds of thousands of lives.
--Rey Ramsey, Chairman, International Board of Directors, Habitat for Humanity International
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