Chris Johnson | Posted on August 16, 2023 |

Sponsoring a family’s home is an attainable and life-changing endeavor

Sponsoring a family’s home is an attainable and life-changing endeavor for a group or individual

If your church class, civic group, school club, company or any other kind of organization is looking for an uplifting project that can be unifying for your team and at the same time life-changing for someone else, consider raising money to sponsor a home through The Fuller Center for Housing.

It’s a more attainable endeavor than you might think.

While new home construction costs have risen sharply in the United States, sponsoring a home in one of The Fuller Center’s 20 international locations remains an affordable option for those who would like to extend a hand-up to a hard-working family striving for a better life — one for which a simple, decent home can be the foundation.

A church group or Sunday school class could put their faith into action and extend love into the far reaches of God’s world by funding a home in Sri Lanka for $2,800, in Madagascar for $3,750, in Nepal for $5,050 or Thailand for $7,000. Some fundraising efforts, such as a car wash, can raise such sums in a single day!

It’s not hard to imagine a school’s Spanish club having a fundraiser to build a home in Peru for $6,500 or an African studies department at a college sponsoring a home in Ghana for $6,100 or Cameroon for $8,000.

House sponsorships are particularly helpful right now for our partners in Haiti and Nicaragua, two countries that were once hugely popular with Fuller Center Global Builders volunteers. Unfortunately, political instability has forced The Fuller Center to pause the sending of volunteers into those countries. To keep the work going, our determined leaders on the ground desperately need house sponsorships — $6,500 in Haiti and $7,500 in Nicaragua.

By sponsoring a home, you are partnering with families instead of offering a handout. The families repay the building costs on terms they can afford through zero-percent-interest mortgages. Those repayments go into a local fund to help others in their community get the very same hand-up.

So, not only do partner families receive the Greater Blessing as promised in the Bible by becoming givers themselves, but your house sponsorship gift is recycled and multiplied through the years to help family after family. One house sponsorship can be the mustard seed that builds an entire community over time.

“Sponsoring an entire home for a family is one of those things you can feel proud of for such a long time,” Fuller Center Vice President of International Programs Ryan Iafigliola noted. “Not only is it something with a long-term impact on families and children that doesn’t really wear out, but as the families pay it forward with our no-profit, no-interest loan, your gift becomes one that keeps on giving.”

You don’t have to watch the news very long these days to see that the world is full of problems, and it often seems there is very little we can do about it. But you can build a better world — one home and one family at a time.

“Jesus spoke of going to prepare a place for us in his Father’s House, which he said has many rooms,” Iafigliola said. “Millard Fuller used to read that Bible verse and say, ‘Jesus has Heaven taken care of — it’s the Earth that’s a mess!’ When we prepare a place for families to live, we are doing the work of God right here where Jesus has called us, on Earth.”

If you or your group are interested in sponsoring a home internationally, contact Ryan Iafigliola at ryani@fullercenter.org. If you would like to sponsor a home in the United States, please contact the Fuller Center covenant partner in your area of interest or email Stacey Driggers at sdriggers@fullercenter.org.

For links to information about each of The Fuller Center’s covenant partners around the world — including those across the United States — go to fullercenter.org/locations.