Groundbreaking And Blessing Gets 23rd Jimmy Carter Work Project Underway

LONAVALA, 12th March 2006: Last week’s International Women’s Day saw the first earth moved in the 2006 Jimmy Carter Work Project in a quiet ceremony on the site where hundreds of families and thousands of volunteers will soon be active.

Praying for the success of JCWP: (from left) Pastor Diwaker Wankhede of the Church of Nazarene leads the blessings with Habitat community affairs leader Freddy Martis (in hat); Joseph Scaria, director of the Habitat Resource Center in Mumbai Director and part of the JCWP management team plus construction leader Dale Kirk

The first sod: Joseph Scaria, director of the Habitat Resource Center in Mumbai Director and part of the JCWP management team and construction leader Dale Kirk set to work on JCWP 2006

Ready to role: the prebuild team (from left) Mike, Norman, Bob, volunteer Tom Carter, Malvin Pagdanganan and Dale Kirk

Habitat for Humanity India’s Joseph Scaria led a short blessing of Habitat staffers and volunteers on the site.

“It was a great, prayerful, and important step today. We did the ground breaking at 10.30 in the morning. We prayed and the entire international and Indian teams were there along with our architects and project managers,” he said.

The groundbreaking coincided with International Women’s Day. Habitat’s partner in JCWP 2006 is Abhinav Co-operative Credit Society, a local grassroots organization that assists women’s self-help savings groups across 26 villages.

The 23rd annual JCWP runs from 29th October to 3rd November. Volunteers will build more than 100 one-story twin units. The site is near the Mumbai-Pune railway line. The block structures will have a cement-floor, and two rooms for each family.

The three-phase project will eventually see some 200 families housed on the land and hundreds more housed in decent homes in their own villages.

The groundbreaking ceremony was symbolic. Formal site preparation and laying of foundations are due to begin by the end of March.