Philanthropic activity of former President Carter

2025-01-01 21:00:00, Kosova & Bota CNA

President-elect Donald Trump announced Tuesday that he plans to attend former President Jimmy Carter's funeral. Funeral services are expected to be held in Georgia and Washington on January 4-9. Former President Carter made a long philanthropic contribution after leaving the White House. As VOA correspondent Kane Farabaugh reports, volunteers and supporters of his philanthropic work are mourning his death.

Volunteer Suzanne Taylor from Buffalo, New York admits that... she has no special skills.

"I have no construction skills... I'm afraid of flying..." says Mrs. Taylor, who works with the organization "Habitat for Humanity".

But when he was donating funds online to aid humanitarian efforts after the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan's Kashmir, something caught his eye.

“...the ad said they were accepting applications for Jimmy Carter's India project and I was immediately drawn to it. That was what I had to deal with," says Ms Taylor.

She volunteered with Habitat for Humanity to build houses alongside former President Carter in India in 2006. She participated in about a dozen other construction projects around the globe led by the former president and his wife. , Rosalynn.

"I think the only reason I got involved was the Carters," says Ms Taylor.

For one week each year, the Carter couple built houses for the Habitat for Humanity organization.

The rest of the year, they serve at the Carter Center, to "fight disease, inspire hope and establish peace" around the world... Something Chris Jones of Portland, Oregon didn't yet know as he searched for an organization to which he would donate his money. Along with his wife Barb, Mr. Jones was impressed by the Carter Center's financial management.

"I didn't know that Jimmy Carter was very careful about overseeing how the funds were spent," he says.

Mr. Jones not only donated money over the years to the Carter Center, but also participated in one of its main democracy programs - election monitoring.

"It was the Arab Spring elections in Tunisia in 2014. They called me to ask me to go there for a two-week mission and I went," says Mr Jones.

Mr. Jones later also participated in the election monitoring mission in Liberia in 2017.

He is grateful that the Carter couple's global humanitarian work offered him an opportunity beyond mere financial support. He says that monitoring the elections was "transformative".

"Monitoring the polling stations, supervising the counting of votes, made me understand how the democratic process works in these countries," says Mr. Jones.

He says Jimmy Carter will be remembered most for the work he did in the years after he left the White House.

"I think the achievement he was most proud of was the Carter Center, and I want the world to remember how transformative it was and how much goodness it brought," says Mr. Jones.

Volunteer Suzanne Taylor intends to continue contributing to Habitat for Humanity and the Carter Center. She says the biggest testament to the Carters' work is the supporters themselves who continue to contribute and who have met Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter in person.

"There are new people coming in as donors, supporters and builders," Ms Taylor says.

The Carter Center has monitored over 100 elections and continues to fight neglected diseases around the globe. Guinea worm disease, which once infected more than 3.5 million people, has now dropped to fewer than 20 cases. The complete elimination of the disease was one of the main efforts of former President Jimmy Carter at the center he established.