Marina Borobova, a 43-year-old Ukrainian woman, found herself a widow with two children to care for and no means of employment. To put food on the table and pay her bills, the desperate woman had to sell her personal belongings, including jewelry given to her by her late husband.

Through her resourcefulness, Marina found the means to start her own business by selling candy and other items in Zaporozhye’s open marketplace – the most common form of commerce in Ukraine – but her limited financial resources hampered her ability to sustain the enterprise.

That’s when a little HOPE and Providence can go a long way.

Through an innovative microlending program administered by HOPE International and funded from the construction and sale of homes by concerned homebuilders, such as North Florida’s Providence Homes by Bill Cellar, thousands of people like Marina in Eastern Europe, Africa and Asia have been able to open businesses and begin to rebuild their lives.

It was in her darkest hour that HOPE came into Marina’s life, supplying her with a $500 loan – equal to almost 6 months of income in Ukraine – that she used to rent her own stall and purchase more supplies. Consequently, her business grew rapidly, she repaid the loan, and through a second loan, she opened a second site in the marketplace. Today, she is financially independent and has secured a future for her children who now have the opportunity to go on to higher education.

Zaporozhye’s open marketplace – the most common form of commerce in Ukraine.

BUILDING A “HOUSE FOR HOPE”
HOPE International is a Lancaster, Pennsylvania-based, non-profit organization that provides microenterprise loans to the poor in underdeveloped countries, usually women with children who have been widowed or abandoned by war or devastation. Most of the loans, generally $100 – $500, are used to help people in Third World nations, develop small businesses and begin to rebuild their lives. Examples include selling shoes or vegetables in an open market or purchasing sheep or pigs for livestock. Nearly all HOPE loans are repaid, averaging a 99% repayment rate. That means the same $500 loan that helped one family out of poverty this year will help another family next year and then another family the following year and so on.

The microloans are funded in part through proceeds raised by the faith-based non-profit’s “House for Hope” program. Simply, a homebuilder agrees to build a house and invites their subcontractors and suppliers to donate their time, labor, and materials to reduce the building cost of the home. Ultimately, the home is then sold, and HOPE receives the profits. Between this collaboration with local homebuilders and the high loan repayment rate that makes the "House for HOPE" program so successful, long after the home has been sold. To date, HOPE International has issued more than $5 million in micro-loans.

“With the average income in Ukraine being right around $75 to $80 dollars a month, a $300 loan can have a big impact,” said Joel Anderson, Director of Development for HOPE International. “It makes a huge difference. Here, if I walked into a bank and said I need to borrow $300 for a business loan I'd get laughed right out the door. It is a very different environment over there. Sometimes there is no banking system, as we know it. The government and the family support isn't there to help out like we have in the United States.”

The most recent “House for HOPE,” built by Jacksonville, Florida-based Providence Homes by Bill Cellar, netted almost $100,000, which could help as many as 20,000 people over the next 10 years. The Providence Homes’ “House for HOPE” – a 3,164-square foot, five-bedroom, three-bathroom home in the exclusive River Hills Reserve neighborhood of Jacksonville – was the first project of its kind by any Florida-based homebuilder. Yet, this type of giving and concern for his fellow mankind is not unfamiliar to Bill Cellar, President and CEO of Providence Homes.
“The leadership and teamwork that Providence Homes has exhibited as the first homebuilder in Florida to construct a ‘House for HOPE’ has set a new level of support and compassion to which every homebuilder in the country should aspire,” said Jeff Rutt, founder of HOPE International and a two-time recipient of the National Association of Home Builders’ “America’s Best Builder” Award.

In many ways, Cellar’s story of founding one of the United States’ most-honored, locally-owned homebuilding companies from his own personal savings is reminiscent of many of the same struggles and hardships facing the small-business owning recipients of HOPE’s micro-loans.

BUILDING SUCCESS ONE HOME AT A TIME
One day in 1992, Bill Cellar sat with a dictionary to find a name for his new homebuilding company that captured his faith in God and his humble yet prudent management style. By Divine design, Cellar came upon the perfect word – Providence.

Calling his company Providence Homes, Cellar has steadily grown his business from a one-man, home-based operation to a staff of 28 full-time employees. Providence Homes believes in offering homeowners flexibility in home design without charging custom home prices. This belief has created a strong constituency among their homeowners and is the reason that people buy Providence Homes again and again.

The oldest of four children, Cellar inherited his entrepreneurial spirit from his father, who had built a very successful software company in Southern California that he sold during the ’60s. A self-described serious but active child, the soft-spoken Cellar had a penchant for numbers and excelled at math. After earning an undergraduate degree in business and economics from UCLA, Cellar attended the University of Virginia’s prestigious Darden Graduate School of Business Administration. Shortly upon acquiring his MBA, Cellar moved to Jacksonville soon afterwards to begin working as a strategic planner for Barnett Bank.

Within a few years later, Cellar wanted a different challenge and spent the next three years learned the ins and outs of commercial construction business from a friend. Coupling this new found knowledge with his higher education, Cellar took a chance in 1992 and purchased a $6,000 parcel of residential land on the west side of Jacksonville. Pledging to make a difference in the homebuilding industry, Cellar used his own modest savings to finance the construction of a speculative home that would be both beautiful and affordable.

Since selling that first home nearly 12 years ago, Providence Homes has continued to grow at a geometric rate – averaging more than 200 new home constructions worth more than $50 million in revenues annually. Current growth projections for the next five years see the company growing to future annual revenues of $100 million. Due to his outstanding business acumen, Cellar has gone from building on leftover scraps of land to being able to select prime homesites in North Florida’s most popular and exclusive communities.

Cellar has always maintained the goal of building every home with the care and detail that he would his own. Although he acts as the company’s president and chief executive officer, Cellar can often be found with Chief Operating Officer Sean Junker and other executives personally inspecting each finished home, sometimes down on their hands and knees, so that homebuyers will never have to worry about the smallest detail during the final walkthrough.

As Providence Homes continued to grow in sales and revenues throughout the ‘90s, Cellar’s business skills became critical to helping the company stay competitive and profitable as it developed a more “corporate” infrastructure, with distinct divisions dedicated to management, marketing and sales, design, engineering, and construction. Despite doubling in size six times over the last decade, Providence Homes and its executive staff, more than two dozen company employees, eight full-time sales agents, and team of top-quality professionals and craftspeople have never wavered from Cellar’s core philosophy – providing homeowners with the greatest homebuying experience possible.

Providence Homes has been a recipient of numerous Parade of Homes Awards for design excellence and was recognized twice by INC. Magazine as one of the Top 500 fastest growing companies in America. The Jacksonville Business Journal has consistently ranked Providence Homes on their Top 50 Fastest Growing Businesses. Cellar is a member of the Board of Directors of the Northeast Florida Builders Association and a member of the National Association of Home Builders. Providence Homes is currently building homes in more than 12 communities in North Florida with price ranges from the $140s to more than $500,000.

Cellar attributes his success as much to the lessons taught by his earthly father as those from the heavenly Father. “I feel very fortunate and humbled that God has allowed me do what I really love to do with a group of wonderful, talented people and to try to give back a little of His love for my neighbor, whether in Jacksonville or around the world,” he said.

Consequently, Cellar gives back to the community through numerous faith-based, non-profit organizations, such as HOPE International. He has traveled extensively throughout Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean to work on a wide range of health, youth development, nation-building, and leadership initiatives all centered around Jesus of Nazareth. Through his faith and prudent management, Cellar, who lives in Jacksonville with his wife of 14 years, Joanne, and his four sons – Will, Alex, Charlie, and Jack – will continue to dedicate his time and energy to making his company even stronger, providing for the less fortunate and helping charitable organizations.

SIDEBAR:
The trade contractors that participated in the construction of the HOPE house included:
· Ray Leach Irrigation,
· Elegant Door and Glass,
· B & B Exterminating, Sizemore & Associates
· JB Mathews
· Color Wheel
· Sears Appliances
· GLS Trim
· Builder’s First Source
· Southern Scapes
· Custom Comfort
· Sawyer Gas
· Munson & Bryan Electric
· Canac Cabinets
· Surface Crafters
· Perfect Paints
· Carpet Carousel/Mohawk
· Reese’s Roofing
· Atlantic Marble
· Florida Builders Specialties
· Advanced Disposal
· Ranger American
· Skyetec
· Big D Windows
· Carolina Lumber