Affiliate History

The Habitat story in Salem County begins in the early 1960's when Vic and Diane Scott traveled to Georgia to visit Bible scholar/farmer Clarence Jordan, founder of Koinonia partners, a Christian community. He died suddenly in 1969, and the Scotts donated 100 flowering crabapple trees to Koinonia in his memory. A letter of thanks came immediately from a young lawyer named Millard Fuller. A former millionaire who had given his wealth away, Millard and his family had just begun building homes for poor sharecroppers with Clarence Jordan.

Correspondence between Fullers and Scotts continued. By 1976 Diane was assisting Millard (via airmail between NJ and Africa) with Bokotola, the book describing Fullers' three years of home building in Zaire. In the summer of 1976 the Scotts met the Fuller family face-to-face for the first time, on their arrival home at JFK airport. A new program to provide simple, decent homes for families was being launched. It's now known worldwide as Habitat for Humanity International.

Vic and Diane thought this would be a good program for Salem County, and began interesting other county residents in this vision. On April 27, 1982, a group met at the First Baptist Church of Woodstown to explore the feasibility of forming a Habitat for Humanity organization for Salem County. Enough people were willing to commit to this venture and on June 30, 1982 the first Salem County Habitat volunteers met at the Scott's home in Mannington. Fred Coffin of Canton, NJ chaired this historic event. Our Affiliate Logo was created by Doris Bryant and Kenneth Slifer (Diane's father). The group met throughout the summer of 1982 outlining their mission and goals.
On October 14, 1982 six volunteers from Salem County, following a meeting with Millard Fuller and the International Habitat Board of Directors, were granted status making Salem County Habitat the oldest Habitat affiliate in New Jersey!