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PrintTulsan Ken Klein leads Habitat for Humanity International
Habitat for Humanity International’s new board chairman is a Tulsan who has been dedicated to the cause for more than 20 years.
The president of Tulsa-based Kleinco Properties, a family-run real estate development firm, Ken Klein estimates that he has worked on about 50 homes since he first became involved with Habitat in the late ’80s.
“It was an opportunity to get a little sawdust under my fingers,” he says. “I was doing things I’d typically be telling others to do, so that was fun. Then I realized there was a whole lot more to it than just building a house and learned more about Habitat’s motto of giving people a hand up and not a hand out.”
It wasn’t a total surprise for Klein when he became Habitat’s board chairman in November 2009, although he describes it as a humbling experience. He was vice chair of the board for two years before becoming chairman. He will hold the position until November 2011.
The 25-member board meets twice a year in Georgia, where Habitat is based, and once a year internationally.
Klein describes the board as a classical, policy-level board that focuses on the ministry’s mission, its annual and long-term goals, the policies to implement those goals and financial performance.
Klein has traveled with former President Jimmy Carter and his wife to Vietnam and China to visit projects under way there. In November 2009, Klein went to southeast Asia and China with the Carter Work Project, a weeklong build that helped families in need of decent, affordable housing in the Mekong region, according to the Habitat Web site.
Three thousand volunteers from around the world joined the Carter Work Project to help build 166 houses during the week in Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and China. Klein was in Chiang Mai, Thailand, where Habitat built 82 homes.
The 82 benefiting families assisted in the building by making 250,000 concrete blocks used in the construction of their homes.
A family of four now lives in the home the Kleins helped to build. Previously the family literally lived in a pigsty before working with Habitat volunteers to build their first home.
“By Wednesday the roof was on and their whole demeanor changes and they start to get excited because they realize that it is going to happen,” Klein says. “And Friday when you put the front door up ... all of a sudden the front door shuts (and) you realize it might be the first time in their lives they had a front door.”
He describes the trip as overwhelming and adds that these types of experiences happen in Tulsa, too.
“When you hand over the keys to the home and all the workers are there with the family, there is not a dry eye in the house,” he says. “It makes it all worth it.”
Habitat has also helped Klein refocus on his faith, he says, by giving him a more concrete way to link his faith to his work.
“To be involved in something that included both housing and strengthening my faith was just off the charts,” Klein says. “Those are the two components that have driven me to invest in the ministry in both time and talent.”
