Building with Celebrities

Many celebrities around the world are connected with Habitat and act as the organization's brand ambassador in every country that Habitat operates in. These celebrities help Habitat in increasing awareness of the global housing crisis, recruit volunteers and raise funds. This week was no exception.

Celebrity-in-Chief was none other than past US president, Jimmy Carter. Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter participate in a Habitat build each year - alternating between the US and an international destination. This is a special build for Habitat and is labeled as the Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter Work Project. The president was building house #40, which happened to be right across the street from our house (#27). Mona and I had the privilege of meeting him at the site. He chided us about the slow progress being made on our house but we countered by comparing the number of volunteers on his house versus ours!

John Abraham (popular Bollywood actor) is a spokesperson for Habitat India. He visited the site for a few hours but was unable to participate in the build due to illness. Another popular actor, Madhavan, spent a day building with us and sweated it out along with the rest of us. There were a couple of other Bollywood actors - Pooja Bedi and Jacqueline Fernandez in attendance.

Celebrities from other parts of the world were also in attendance and included Jet Li.

With all the celebrities in attendance, the media wasn't far behind and of course the president had an entourage of secret service and other staff present with him.