In a speech titled "Students Hammering Out a Difference," Millard Fuller, the founder and President of Habitat for Humanity International, described Habitat's mission and future plans.
Habitat is now one of the premier social justice and social relief organization in the world and has built houses in 24,000 towns in 63 nations since 1976.
According to Fuller, the organization has grown because growth has been one step at a time.
"At first, we built one house, for one needy family in southwest Georgia," he said. "Today we are building a house every 30 minutes. While I speak, two houses will have been built."
Fuller also outlined the organization's plans for the Millennium.
"We want to make shelter a matter of conscience. People who are made in the image of God should not live in subhuman conditions," he said.
"The foundation stone on which human development occurs is a good house," Fuller said. "Providing decent housing is a profound ingredient in making a society in which everyone can have a chance."
Events to publicize the shelter issue will include a dawn dedication of five Habitat houses on a New Zealand island, that will be one of first places to enter the next millennium.
Also, Habitat will complete its 100,000th house, to be built in New York City this September during the organization's annual Building of the Faith week, he said.
Fuller said he hopes that this publicity will make it politically impossible to allow people to continue to live in inadequate housing and poverty conditions.
"Our other program for the 21st century is based on asking a simple question of every community: By what date are you going to eliminated all substandard housing in your town?"
Six communities, including Americus, Georgia, where the first Habitat house was built, have already set dates early in the next century.
Including the Dartmouth chapter, there are 553 campus chapters in the United States. Students participate both in regular Habitat chapter work by building houses in local communities and special mass builds.
"Last spring break over 8,000 students from several hundred schools across the nation built houses as part of Habitat's U.S. Collegiate Spring Challenge," Fuller said.
Approximately 40 students attended the lecture last Thursday in 105 Dartmouth Hall.
