From building homes to eradicating disease, Jimmy Carter's charity ...

In October 2019, former US president Jimmy Carter had just become the oldest living president, surpassing George HW Bush by 172 days.

He was 95 and recovering from a recent fall that had fractured his pelvis.

But even 14 stitches couldn't stop the nonagenarian from visiting a Habitat for Humanity construction site in Nashville. 

The year marked his 36th — and final — year volunteering for the charity he had embraced ever since he left the White House. 

And as the media circulated images of Carter hammering away with a black eye, they also unwittingly tapped into a defining image of Carter's ambitious post-presidential legacy.

So, how did the one-term president become a global name in humanitarianism after leaving office?  

A bus ride from Georgia and an abandoned building

Just three months after his presidency ended in 1981, Carter and his wife Rosalynn travelled to New York's Lower East Side to renovate an abandoned building with Habitat for Humanity. 

The pair rode in on a bus with a group of Georgia volunteers and stayed in a grungy church dormitory outside Lincoln Tunnel, says author Jonathan Alter, who wrote the 2020 book His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life.

There was a notable absence of ego from a man who had been flanked by Secret Service agents only months ago. 

"This is a former president of the United States, and he's on the bus like anybody else," Mr Alter said in 2023.

 "At that church they had a kind of a dormitory, and they had one private room that was going to be for the Carters.

"The Carters found out that there was a couple that was honeymooning, and so they gave that couple the room and they slept in the dorm."

The visit would mark the beginning of the inaugural Jimmy Carter Work Project with Habitat — an annual week-long sojourn for the former president and first lady to build houses for those in need. 

Habitat for Humanity International CEO Jonathan Reckford credits it with igniting international awareness of the charity. 

Over the Carters' 38 years with the group, the project spread to 14 countries, built 4,417 homes, and gained 106,100 volunteers. 

But it was not just a public relations exercise. Carter was known to be a hard worker, according to Habitat's former New York CEO Karen Haycox.

When asked about what spurred him to volunteer his time to the Habitat project, Carter would often say he "got more out of it than I put into it".

"Like other Habitat volunteers, I have learned that our greatest blessings come when we are able to improve the lives of others," he said.

Stamping out a disease no-one else would tackle 

It was a disease Carter said he hoped he would outlive, but the steps the former president took in the name of preventing Guinea worm disease saw it almost eradicated in his lifetime.

The disease, a parasitic infection also known as dracunculiasis, afflicted an estimated 3.5 million people when Carter began his mission to stamp it out in 1986.

With no drug treatment or preventative vaccine available, the disease often debilitates people's joints, and can cripple local economies.

"So we decided to take it on."

The Carter Center, Carter's non-governmental organisation, used education to help people stem the disease's spread through contaminated water, and raised awareness about prevention methods such as filtering water drawn from open sources or drilling boreholes.

Carter also personally negotiated a four-month ceasefire in Sudan in 1994 to allow health workers to travel to remote villages and engage in education efforts.

The numbers now are unrecognisable, when compared to those at the beginning of the program's implementation.

Carter's efforts mean dracunculiasis could soon join diseases like small pox in being totally eradicated, according to the late Partners in Health founder Paul Farmer.

"I mean, there were millions of cases when he got involved … after his presidency in the mid-80s.

"And now we are down to fewer than 100 last year."

The Carter Center also helped create eradication programs for river blindness, lymphatic filariasis, trachoma, schistosomiasis, and malaria.

Baseball democracy and a Nobel Peace Prize 

While Carter's diplomatic tact was rarely acknowledged during his one-term presidency, in later life it earned him the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize.

Carter received the honour due to his "outstanding commitment to human rights", including his role as a peaceful mediator and democratic electoral observer. 

In 1994, amid escalating tensions between the US and North Korea, Carter became the first former president to visit Pyongyang.

Meeting with dictator Kim Il-sung, Carter's trip paved the way for a bilateral deal between the two nations on a nuclear weapons pact. 

Carter later said he believed his trip had stopped North Korea from launching a war with the US. 

"The Chinese were convinced that if we declared to the United Nations that North Korea was an outlaw government and their revered, worshipped leader, Kim Il-sung, was a criminal, that they would have to save face by launching an attack," he told PBS in 2003.

In 2002, Carter also made history by becoming the first former or sitting US president to visit Cuba since 1959.

Ignoring protestations from his Secret Service agents, Carter joined Fidel Castro in throwing a pitch for the start of an all-stars Cuban baseball game.

In many ways, it was characteristic of a leader who had been a rare advocate for improving relations with Cuba, including urging the US to end economic embargoes.

His respect for Cubans, in tandem, earnt the admiration of Castro. 

Lawyer and negotiator Bernardo Benes told CNN that Castro frequently expressed his respect for Carter's "moral and religious values".

During the 2002 visit, Castro openly praised the former US president. 

In response, Carter said he hoped the visit would give him the chance to "to discuss ideals that Rosalynn and I hold dear … peace, human rights, democracy and the alleviation of suffering," CNN reported.

Carter also worked on other diplomatic negotiations, such as the Nairobi Agreement in 1999 between Sudan and Uganda.