Global Builders volunteers build homes, goodwill, and a better world
Global Builders volunteers build homes, goodwill, and a better world
Editor’s note: “How we build a better world” is a regular series of articles featuring a closer look at the methods and principles of enlightened charity that make our affordable housing ministry work so effectively.
Many people love to travel the world and see familiar sights like The Eiffel Tower in Paris, Big Ben in London, the Colosseum in Rome, and other places that are crowded with tourists jockeying to get the best angles for selfies as they are jostled and hurried along.
The Fuller Center Global Builders program is different. It offers volunteers an avenue to see what life is truly like in another country, far from the well-trodden tourist paths. These volunteers get to meet and develop relationships with real people living their day-to-day lives. Better still, they can extend a hand-up to families in need of decent places to live by building homes alongside those families and their fellow volunteers.
“The best thing is when you get to meet the families, especially when the families are working alongside you,” Global Builders veteran Vicki Steinwurtzel says. “It makes you so much more appreciative of the work you’re doing. You don’t see that if you go as a tourist. You don’t see how people live.”
“Especially when you’re embedded in the local community like with the Global Builders, it’s not just a touristy visit,” says Malak Mowafi, who volunteered in Portugal during her senior year of college. “You get to see how other people live and what they experience on a daily basis — the food they eat, all the traditions they have. That was really rewarding. I think traveling in general and embedding yourself in the local communities is how it should be instead of just doing the touristy stuff.”
That doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with visiting international sites flooded with tourists. They’re popular because they’re amazing to witness. In fact, many volunteers plan visits to see amazing sites in such Global Builders destinations as Peru, Portugal, Romania, and more. Machu Picchu in Peru — one of the “New Seven Wonders of the World” — is a common stop for Global Builders volunteers.
International travel, however, is a more powerful experience when you can see the world and change it at the same time. Building a simple, decent home where families can grow and thrive is one of the most impactful ways you can change the world for the better.
Global Builders volunteers are generous people who fund their own travel and pay a fee to join these adventures. The fee not only covers food, lodging, and other build-related expenses, but the fees also help fund the costs of building a home. Because The Fuller Center is able to build in international locations at a much lower cost than in the United States, a single team’s fees can often fund an entire home.
Why not just send money to these places? When Global Builders volunteer teams come into these often remote locations, they help create work for locals — including at hotels and restaurants, as well as for bus drivers and laborers. Instead of taking work away from local construction workers, such as skilled masons, these volunteers supplement their work and speed up the building process.
These volunteers also bring something perhaps even more important with them as they show these communities that people do care and that God’s love extends to them, even if they may have once felt forgotten. The vast majority of teams come from the United States, and they help show America in its best light, as a beacon of hope.
“I just love it,” says Kaitlyn Reper, a nurse who has volunteered on multiple Global Builders trips. “I have a huge passion for helping others and for traveling. And I like to show that not everybody in America is out for themselves. There needs to be more of that in this world — helping others and being kind to our neighbors.”
Even in places that may have once viewed arriving American strangers with wary eyes, these teams are now enthusiastically welcomed as soon-to-be new friends and partners in a righteous effort to improve their community.
“We got amazing hospitality everywhere we went,” says Connor Ciment, a former Fuller Center Bicycle Adventure leader who served on a Global Builders trip to El Salvador with his wife. “It was definitely an eye-opener to have hospitality poured on us when we went into the trip thinking that we were going to be pouring ourselves out toward these people — and then you just feel it completely in reverse. They’re awesome people, humble, super hard-working, friendly and really kind to us as foreigners. We were welcomed to the build site and welcomed to the community. They’re really gracious.”
The culture shock for Fuller Center Global Builders volunteers often happens not when arriving in a new land but upon their return to the United States. Perhaps it’s because as they’re changing the world a little at a time, they’re also changing themselves.
One survey of Global Builders participants found that 85 percent said the trip helped them to live a life of greater meaning and significance, while 82 percent noted the experience increased their belief that they can do something to make the world a better place.
They also come back full of gratitude, not only for the new people and places they have witnessed but also for their home country.
“Selfishly, you feel a sense of gratitude for the life that you’re going back to,” Steinwurtzel says. “Whether you’re patriotic or not, if you’re born in the United States, the day you’re born you are lucky because you’re born in the United States.”
“I don’t think we know how good we have it until you see other countries and see how those people live,” Reper adds.
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