Founder Joel Davis went on a construction mission trip in 2004. He and a small group of skilled men from his local church spent a week in Barbados doing construction work; but, it wasn’t new construction. Rather, it was work on a building that had already been under construction for over 12 years. What had started more than a decade before as a well-intentioned project for the community in Barbados had become an unending journey of stops and starts. Volunteers came and went, funds ebbed and flowed, and the local community was left with a partially constructed building they had no way to finish on their own.
Joel recognized that the world didn’t really need another organization to start new construction projects. What the world needed was a group of likeminded people committed to finishing what had already been started. Finish the Work was born, and the group returned to Barbados with 39 people from 9 churches to finish the 2004 project. Since that time, Finish the Work has completed many more projects, finishing an average of one per year.
We specifically take on projects that are already in some phase of construction, and we intentionally specify those that are within a scope we can complete within a reasonable time. Our efforts remain focused in Central and South America and the Caribbean so that we can maximize the use of local materials and construction practices. We have finished construction projects in countries including Belize, Trinidad and Tobago, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Barbados.
