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Our Organization
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 Pioneer Press embraces true meaning of shelter -Call this 'Extreme Makeover: World Edition' August 23, 2007 The comments flew hard and fast as soon as news broke that the immensely popular TV reality show "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition'' was coming to the Twin Cities.
It's here to demolish a $350,000 home and build a more luxurious, 5,600-square-foot abode in Minnetonka. The beneficiaries? A high school teacher couple raising seven kids, including four children of the woman's sister, a Washington County woman murdered a year ago by her ex-boyfriend. Their father died several years ago in a car collision.
(Photo: Indonesian workers express joy after "Extreme Tsunami Makeover" in 2005)
God bless the family, wrote more than one reader to this newspaper. There are other more deserving families in the area, wrote others. Why Minnetonka and not North Minneapolis? Why them and not us? Why there and not here? Why this family and not that one? You get the drift.
Hey, folks, "EMHE'' is not HUD or Habitat for Humanity. We're talking Hollywood here, not the Little Sisters of the Poor. It's a TV show. It rakes in huge ratings by tugging at our hearts while deftly tapping into our "Parade of Homes'' curiosity, if not outright desire or envy.
But the show does have a feel-good message: giving of yourself while doing something good for others in need.
Which is why I'd also like to see, among other things, a reality show about what Randall Olson's organization has been doing since 1983 - building thousands of homes for the poorest and most tragedy-stricken families on Earth. war-torn places as New Orleans, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan don't come with playrooms, backyard Jacuzzis or top-of-the-line granite countertops.
In fact, most are built to an internationally accepted space standard of roughly 387.5 square feet per unit - about the size of a large walk-in closet. But it's more than one bedroom, a living room, a small kitchen area and a roof. It's a critical human need and new foundation for lives disrupted by natural disaster or armed conflict.
"I guess if we had a show, its title would be 'Extreme Hope,' " says Olson, who is president and CEO of the faith-based nonprofit, which relocated this year to Maple Grove from Wisconsin.
The TV show has its punchy catchphrase: "Bus driver, move that bus!'' The nonprofit has its own: "Restoring lives, developing communities.''
"The United Nation estimates that 1 billion people in this world don't have adequate shelter or housing,'' says Olson, a University of Minnesota graduate who grew up in Minnesota in Alexandria and the St. Cloud area.
"The heart of our mission is to reach out to those people who are suffering the most in this world. And we go where few others dare to tread."
Funded by private donations and government grants, organization workers and volunteers are dispatched to build homes, schools, clinics, water supply systems and other infrastructure in places where earthquakes, tsunamis and armed conflict have claimed thousands of lives and displaced thousands of people.
In nearly a quarter-century, the group has helped build more than 10,000 homes in Afghanistan while training community residents to take on maintenance responsibilities. They also have built houses for the Biloxi-Chitimachi American Indian community that has lived for centuries in the Mississippi River bayou area ravaged by Hurricane Katrina.
"We don't believe in giving out freebies but giving people the basic tools they will need to maintain and help pull themselves up,'' says Olson, who recently returned from a water-supply project relief trip to the Kurdish section of northern Iraq. The group previously built 1,300 homes for Kurdish refugees in the area.
The mostly mud-brick homes serve as starter homes. They cost roughly $500 to build.
Olson says the homes' size is based on a standard that allows roughly 38 square feet for each occupant. They have gone beyond the standard, as when they rebuilt a home in Afghanistan for a family of seven that worked out to about 56 square feet per family member.
In contrast, the existing home in Minnetonka, described as too small to meet the needs of the extended family, allows 267 square feet for each family member. The home the TV show is building will expand that to 622 square feet per person.
Olson says he wishes the Swenson-Lee family all the best in their new home. But after visiting 45 countries, many in a time of crisis, braving the Taliban of Afghanistan and insurgent gunfire in Iraq, Olson doesn't need a TV show to instruct him on the global need out there.
"We have great wealth and great resources in this country,'' he says. "But we also live in a global village. My heart goes out to the people who have little or nothing. Jesus said, love your neighbor as yourself. And our neighbors are the people who have suffered the most and lost everything.''
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