Former President Jimmy Carter is likely Habitat for Humanity's most famous volunteer.
When he first began volunteering with the home-building nonprofit in 1984 -- about three years after leaving the White House -- Carter and former first lady Rosalynn put the organization on the map, Habitat for Humanity International's CEO Jonathan Reckford told CNN.
That year, Carter was in New York City's Lower East Side when he ran by a group of students working on a Habitat project and thought: "Rosalynn and I should come up and give them a hand."
Sure enough, he returned to Manhattan with his wife soon after, working with a team of volunteers to renovate an abandoned building for affordable housing.
The Manhattan apartments became the inaugural Carter Work Project.
The Carters would volunteer with Habitat every year that followed until 2020, according to the nonprofit, eventually working in 14 other countries to build and repair 4,390 Habitat homes, alongside 104,000 volunteers.
Carter has told Habitat that his faith drives his commitment to public service.
Carter was asked by reporters in 2019 why he and his wife continued to do the work more than three decades on.
"We've always gotten more out of it, our Habitat work, than we put into it," he said, according to CNN. "There's always an emotional feeling among the volunteers and the homeowners, kind of binding us together in a spirit of love, appreciation, and mutual respect, and also equality. … Treat everybody the same and try to help people that are in need."
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