Homebuilder starts international charity

An adage says home is where the heart is – and for Springfield-based nonprofit Hope and Horizons Inc., that heart is 6,000 miles away in the war-torn nation of Ukraine.

That is where Hope and Horizons is working to build homes for families who have been displaced by conflict.

Josh Hackworth is president of Hope and Horizons, which he founded with his brother-in-law, homebuilder Ryan Cantrell of Trendsetter Homes LLC. Hackworth said at the outset that he figured the displaced people the organization would help would be facing difficulties like fire, flood or financial hardship – not the devastation of war.

But then someone mentioned the people of Ukraine needed help.

“Both of us were kind of like, I’m sure they do,” Hackworth said, but he added that helping Ukrainians seemed impossible – at least at first.

Hope and Horizons was Cantrell’s idea. To date, it has built nine homes in Ukraine plus one in El Salvador.

Since January 2024, Hackworth has been the organization’s president and its only paid staff member.

He said his first day in office was Jan. 2, 2024. In August later that year, he handed over the keys to the first home built by the registered 501(c)(3) charity in Ukraine.

The home was a gift outright to a single mom and her son.

“The story, of course, was just horrible – her and her son sheltering underground in their root cellar for well over a week while troops were coming through, while bombs were going off overhead, while gunshots were happening,” Hackworth said.

When the battle cleared, the two found shelter in Kyiv, but eventually came back to their land to live in a lean-to for several months, followed by a construction trailer.

“While we’re standing in her living room, she’s like, ‘You haven’t just given us a house; you’ve given us our lives back,’” Hackworth said. “Ryan and I were like, we want to keep doing this.”

Hackworth is married to Cantrell’s sister Lori. Cantrell is also the founder and CEO of Springfield-based Trendsetter Homes, founded in 2019.

Spiritual calling
Cantrell said Hackworth, a former minister, was searching for a new calling at the same time Cantrell was envisioning the nonprofit. Cantrell said with an expanding business to attend to, he knew he would be doing a nonprofit a disservice if he ran it himself, but Hackworth was another story.

“He has leadership skills, he has people skills, he is an unbelievable public speaker,” Cantrell said. “When you start thinking about, hey, what are all the things that can make a nonprofit successful from a leadership standpoint, Josh checks all of those boxes.”

The two began talking about starting a nonprofit in 2023. Cantrell told his brother-in-law that building homes outside of the U.S. for people in need was on his heart.

Cantrell’s spiritual beliefs lead him to feel no one should ever be abandoned.

“Christians have too many times pushed people that we should be loving away because we want to stand on a pedestal and tell them what they’re doing wrong,” he said. “That’s when I started looking at what can we do just to go love people where they’re at, where maybe nobody else is helping them.”

International focus
A lot of successful organizations are already helping people in the U.S., Cantrell said, but he and Hackworth felt called to work internationally.

At first, the organization was looking at places it could go in a few hours on a plane. That’s when Ukraine was suggested by its organizing attorney, now a board member, Christiaan Horton of Carnahan Evans PC.

On Hackworth’s second day on the job, he said he was sitting down with a Connect Church staff member who asked where the charity would function, and Hackworth said Ukraine had come up.

“He said, ‘Well, when do you want to go?’” Hackworth said.

Connect Church has a large Ukrainian congregation and is active in that country, as it turns it.

There were questions addressed in the vetting process – what’s going on, how hard is it to move materials, is it safe? But Hackworth discovered that millions of internally displaced people are inside Ukraine, and millions more have left. Many have experienced atrocities and continuing trauma.

“We began to see the need, and was one of those things, once you see it, you can’t unsee it,” Hackworth said.

Efficiency an aim
In February 2024, one month in, Hackworth said he was on a Zoom call with a Ukraine-based nonprofit that invited him to come build a house. Without asking Cantrell, Hackworth said yes.

“I got off this Zoom call with them, and he said, ‘How’d it go?’” Hackworth said. “I said, ‘Well, we’re building a house in Ukraine.’ He said, ‘Great.’ I was like, ‘We’re going in April.’ He said, ‘Great – let’s get the tickets, let’s do it. We’ll figure it out.’”

And they did.

The first people the organization helped were that mother and son who sheltered through a week of warfare in their root cellar with water up to their ankles.

“We asked how many stories are like this, and the answer was all of them,” Hackworth said.

The group connected with more families who needed homes, and to date, it has built nine in Ukraine – one in Kyiv and the others in the village of Novoselivka. Working in a concentrated area helps the organization to be efficient, with teams of local contractors providing economy of scale.

The houses are modular and quick to construct, Hackworth said, with a three-bedroom, two-bathroom model that can be fully built, furnished and landscaped for $55,000 and a two-bedroom, one-bathroom model for $45,000. Some donors are able to sponsor construction of an entire home, but others give individual smaller donations or a monthly subscription. When a donation comes in, Hackworth said his phone pings – and each ping reminds him of the important work the organization and its supporters are undertaking.

Hackworth said the unit price of $45,000 or $55,000 pays for everything, from removal of debris from warfare down to putting knives and forks in the kitchen drawers, and Ukraine does not charge taxes.

He said Cantrell is skilled at creating beautiful homes, and with Ukrainian contractors, the projects help that country’s economy to recover.

Cantrell said his experience with Ukrainian families shows the worth of the project. One family had a fence that was still standing and functional, but it was riddled with bullet holes.

“It broke my heart,” Cantrell said. “I said I don’t care what the fence costs – I want them to have a new fence, because I don’t want them coming home every day and seeing bullet holes.”

The homeowner might have been as excited about a new fence as she was about the house itself, he said.

In addition to its work in Ukraine, Hope and Horizons recently built its first house in El Salvador. Its design was simpler, constructed of cinder block and concrete with a raised wood floor to keep families off of the dirt.

The El Salvador homes cost about $5,000, Hackworth said, and Hope and Horizons looks to build at least 10 more next year.

“As the Lord provides resources, we’ll keep building,” he said.

Hackworth said Giving Tuesday, a day dedicated to charitable contributions, was good for the organization last year, allowing it to fund two additional houses. This year, he said, he would like to bring in enough on Dec. 2 of this year to build two houses in Ukraine and three in El Salvador.

“We’d love to hit five houses before the end of the year,” he said.

In 2024, Hope and Horizons had revenue of a little over $400,000, and this year Hackworth says they’re tracking to exceed $500,000.

Help for anyone
Hackworth said the organization does not concern itself with politics; instead, its work is about people.

“It doesn’t matter what side of the aisle someone sits on,” he said. “When you get to Ukraine, there is no aisle. Everything’s been blown up. We’re talking about people who just need help.”

He added that the religious beliefs of people served by Hope and Horizons are not a factor in its work. The former minister cited the biblical text of the good Samaritan, in which a Jewish man is robbed and left for dead by the side of the road, where he is ignored by a Levite and a priest. However, in the passage, it is a man from Samaria – not part of the religious establishment – who stops to help the injured man.

“Jesus would have stopped,” Hackworth said. “We just want to stop and help people that we find that need help.”

Jeff Britton, vice president of production for Digital Monitoring Products Inc., is both a donor and a board member for Hope and Horizons, and he said he loves seeing the work the organization does.

Stories from families served by Hope and Horizons reveal that a new home completely changes their outlook on life and their view of the future, Britton said.

“As a donor, I’ve gotten to be on a FaceTime call with a family as Josh has given them the keys to their new home,” he said. “It’s great to be able to have the connection with the family you’ve been able to help.”