USD President's Report 1989

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most ambitious project to date in the United States will unfold here. During the third week in June former President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalyn, will join 2,000 volunteers in building more than 100 houses in San Diego and Tijuana . " Locally, all of our work so far has been done in Tijuana , where we moved 33 families into homes not long ago," Dr. Briscoe explains. " Habitat likes to say we are not just building homes, but building communities. And it's clear that lives get changed ." "My strongest point of view is to live my faith, to serve other people." -Dennis Briscoe He tells the story of one family from the first Habitat project in Georgia, a tale of a home built with sweat equity and a no- interest mortgage finally paid off. And how a couple who never made it past grade school eventually saw all of their children graduate from college. " Having the chance to own their own home completely changed their expectations for what's possible," he observes. Dr. Briscoe remembers vividly the life experiences which shaped his own perceptions about bringing change to the status quo. In 1957, his seventh grade teacher talked a lot about politics and world affairs. Since that time, he says, " Politics has always been a dream, or rather causes and issues have been ."

PRAGMATIC SERVANT

He shatters the stereotypical image of a number-crunching business professor. People and pain rather than dollars and cents make up his calling card . He relishes his memberships in the peace organization Beyond War and the home building association Habitat for Humanity. As a member of the universi- ty's Social Issues Committee, he encourages students to discover the world of social activism. "We seem to be moving into a value set that it's okay to do volunteer work;' he reflects . "This campus encourages that; it's one of the reasons I like it here."

Dennis Briscoe subscribes to the philosophy that almost anything is possible, if only one's expectations are set high enough . He validated that observation when he traveled to Peru with his wife and son to build homes for the poor. He confirmed it again in San Diego, where he started a chapter of Habitat for

Humanity, an organization which has provided some 4,000 homes for the working poor worldwide. " Everybody in this town believes you can't do low income housing in San Diego," says Dr. Briscoe, who has served as president of Habitat's San Diego-Tijuana chapter the past two years. Yet, Habitat's

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