More good news for Jimmy Carter, although this one’s strictly on the homebuilding front.
One day after Carter's announcement that cancer was gone from his brain stunned people at his church — and the rest of the world as the news quickly spread — a Tennessee organization said it would donate up to a million bucks to his Habitat for Humanity project in Memphis next summer.
The Tennessee Housing Development Authority (THDA) will match the first $1 million in donations for Habitat’s 33rd Annual Jimmy & Rosalynn Carter Work Project, scheduled to take place in Memphis’s Uptown neighborhood Aug. 21-27, 2016. The massive effort will involve building 21 new homes for low-income owners, as well as completing 33 beautification project and 45 “Aging in Place” projects that allow low-income seniors to stay in their homes by improving access and mobility. Thousands of volunteers, including married country superstars Trisha Yearwood and Garth Brooks, will descend on Memphis to work alongside the 91-year-old former president and his 88-year-old wife.
“We hope our $1 million pledge will open people’s eyes to the size and scope of what Habitat for Humanity has planned,” THDA executive director Ralph Perrey said Monday. “THDA is commmitted to the cause, and we hope our financial support will inspire others to get involved and donate.”
The selection of Memphis was announced on Nov. 2nd, when the Carters, Yearwood and Brooks all helped build a Habitat house in Uptown. That one-day effort was a quickly arranged stand-in for the 32nd Annual Carter Work Project that had been scheduled for that week in Nepal — a massive effort that had to be cancelled when continued civil unrest in the remote mountainous country made getting supplies and guaranteeing volunteers safety a problem.
During a press conference that day in Memphis, Carter said he was feeling good and fully intended to be back there next summer "if I am able and God's willing." Five weeks later, he stood in front of the Sunday school class he was teaching at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains and said his most recent brain scan had been clean.
You can go here to make a donation to the Memphis project as part of the matching grant program.
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