Marc Fulmer is a self-effacing man with a big dream.
The island contractor and his wife Mae plan to build farms in Africa to house some of the continents’ 13 million AIDS orphans.
They are trading Bainbridge for Africa to work for a new nonprofit, the Agathos Foundation.
“My responsibilities will be for the actual construction of 4,000 farms communities in sub-Saharan Africa over the next seven years,” Marc Fulmer said. “We would like to inform the community of Bainbridge Island of our mission, and let the community know how they can participate.”
The couple’s adventure began when they met Agathos founder Rob Smith. A general contractor who lives in Everett, Smith grew up the son of a white pastor in South Africa.
He left his homeland as a young adult, in 1977. The departure was motivated by his anguish over the racism, poverty and hopelessness he saw in Zambia and Swaziland.
“I left thinking, ‘There is no answer,’” Smith said. “I knew colonialism and apartheid were wrong, but I saw no solution.”
In the United States, Smith studied architecture at Atlanta College and Georgia Tech. After school he moved to Everett and worked as a contractor while running a business, Old Monastery Woodworks, and raising four children.
But the proportions of the AIDS pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa compelled him to return to help.
The region accounts for 70 percent of the world’s AIDS cases. There are said to be 38 million infected adults there today, and by 2010 there will be 40 million orphans.
With more than a quarter of the population infected, children in some areas have seen parents and all extended family members die. The vulnerable children often lose whatever inheritance they received.
“When I first started musing over this whole disaster,” Smith said, “I saw a farm for sale in Zambia and realized that for $42,000 dollars I could buy 3,000 acres. If I sold my house, I could adopt 100 black kids – all with the name of Smith.”
Smith soon enlarged his vision, and began to think in terms of 20 farms, and then about a massive initiative to create 4,000 safe havens at a cost of over $1 billion dollars.
He believes the money can be raised if the burden is spread among 1,000 churches, 1,000 business groups, 1,000 individuals and 1,000 civic and community groups.
The Agathos Foundation is based in non-denominational Christianity, but Smith said conversion is not the goal.
“Our motivation is humanitarian – to raise kids,” Smith said. “We’re not going out there to make little Christians.”
He hopes to raise the children to be self-sufficient adults, but his first concern is to make a home for children who have been rejected by their society, since being an AIDS orphan carries a stigma.
“Colonialism said, ‘these are our workers,’” Smith said, “but we say ‘these are our children.’ They have to know that we will not reject them. We absolutely will not turn them away.”
Smith, the Fulmers and other foundation members will adopt the orphans who live on the farms they build. The children will learn to run, and ultimately inherit the farms, which become the nucleus for farming communities.
They hope to house about 125 children per farm, and they already have funding for 10 farms.
Each farm will also house between 25 and 40 widows, Smith says.
Without social security or children left alive to help in their old age, the women are, like the children, stranded.
Mae Fulmer, who most recently worked as business manager for Bainbridge Arts and Crafts, hopes to institute a system of “micro-banks” that lend seed money for small businesses.
The Fulmers will leave for a first trip to Africa on May 28, and plan to be building the first farm by August. Meanwhile they are educating themselves about the people they propose to help.
“We’re reading, we’re talking to everyone,” Mae Fulmer said. “We’re living on faith – but with open eyes.”
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For more information on the Agathos Foundation, or to register with the Bainbridge adoptive community, call 780-4644, email marc.fulmer@agathosfoundation.org, or see www.agathosfoundation.org
