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| LINGK: What prompted you to become the first volunteer to join Habitat for Humanity? RAINEY: The folks who actually started the organization were looking for people to work with them. They were looking for people to send to Africa, because they had gone over and started some work in Zaire. So we had a long conversation, but what really convinced me was something that happened while I was teaching in Dawson, Georgia, in one of those abandoned school systems in the deep south were the white kids had gone to private segregated academies and the young black kids left in the public schools were unable to read their own names in the eighth grade. A little girl asked me one day like seventh graders often do, “why do we have to learn this old stuff anyway?” I told her, “if you get an education, you'll have a better life.” She came back at me immediately and said, “ oh yeah, that’s what they told my mama.” That night on my way home to Americus (GA), I went by to see the “mama” and found them living in a shack in a corn field with literally no doors, no windows, no running water, no electricity and no hope. I said to myself, “I'll waste my life trying to teach kids who are living in these kinds of conditions to believe that there is any reason why they should learn to read or to do anything else”. That day, I decided to address their lives on a more basic level. I continued to teach the rest of that year - then I switched careers, moved into an old house and began to work on Habitat. LINGK: You served as chair of the Family Selection Committee for the Koinonia program, what was that program about? CLIVE: Koinonia, a small interracial Christian farming community founded in 1942 was the founding program from which Habitat for Humanity was born. The idea was to sell houses to people at no interest or profit, to help them obtain something they could call their own, as well as, a decent place to live. Part of my bargaining chip for going to Africa was that I wanted to see the work that Koinonia was doing in Africa, happening here in America, where Habitat was actually founded. There were slums and bad areas and I wanted to see change. So, Clarence Jordan founder of the Koinonia farm and Millard Fuller( founder of Habitat for Humanity) both developers of the “partnership housing” concept bought some land that I pointed out to them and asked me to chair the committee to select the families that would live in the houses we would build. Back then, I helped build houses, led the committee that did the visitation and confirmation of these applicants, solicited applications and helped people to understand what Habitat was about and how to get into new homes. I'm pleased to tell you that those houses are still standing and looking great. Continues on page 2 |
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