This March, Westford’s strive towards affordable housing was elevated to an international level when two Andover residents, Fatima and Taher Esmail, approached Habitat for Humanity Greater Lowell with a request to collaborate with Project Rise, a global philanthropic project.
Project Rise is an initiative created by the Dawoodi Bohra community, a religious sect of Islam based out of Mumbai, India. The project focuses on international sustainable development in areas such as environmentalism, food security and more. This spring, Project Rise organized an international build day, encouraging Dawoodi Bohra members to build affordable housing projects in their local communities.
Fatima and Taher are Dawoodi Bohras and active philanthropists of the Andover and Billerica communities, the latter of which is the Boston Dawoodi Bohra community centre and mosque location. They regularly volunteer at local food banks and the United Nations Food Program. When they heard of Project Rise’s Build Day, they reached out to fellow faith-based organization, Habitat for Humanity Greater Lowell.
“We have done really well with [working towards] food security,” Fatima said. “And the next important thing in a person’s life is housing. So we thought that if we can even help with the housing aspect and diversify our initiatives, it would really help our country and the world as a whole. And who better than Habitat for Humanity? Their initiative is very similar to what Project Rise wants to do.”
One of the Dawoodi Bohras goals is to reach out and collaborate with other faith-based organizations. As a Christian-based organization, Habitat for Humanity does the same. It is already involved with the Team Up Project, which is based in bridging divides between interfaith communities through philanthropic work.
So, when Fatima and Taher met Habitat for Humanity Greater Lowell’s Executive Director Sheilagh Carlisle, they all recognized it as an opportunity to continue a shared mission.
“There’s a lot of misunderstanding and rhetoric and hurt and upset and it doesn’t need to be that way. The concept being that a lot of times when people sit down across a table from each other, they might not be listening or hearing each other …So those three charities are trying this project where they’re trying to get people of different faiths and different beliefs, different political parties, out to the job site to work alongside each other, to realize that actually a lot of us have very common goals,” Carlisle said.
On March 28, Dawoodi Bohra and Habitat for Humanity members met at 70 Boston Road to renovate the donated t he1865 Drew farmhouse donated by the nonprofit of The Drew Farmhouse Inc. Under the guidance of a Habitat for Humanity construction expert, the volunteers built staircases, laid down hard wood floors, painted walls, built doors and more.
“It always helps working with your hands. And our community members, when they came back, felt very, very enriched by the experience and wanted to do more with it,” Fatema said
The team renovated aspects of the building in a day, starting at 8 a.m. and wrapping up production in the evening. The team built two new single-family condo units, each with three bedrooms and two bathrooms.
In addition to Westford, coordinated “Build Day” activities also took place in Atlanta, Miami, San Francisco, Seattle, Texas, and Washington, D.C., where volunteers worked alongside construction professionals to support families facing housing insecurity. More than 90 volunteers contributed over 500 service hours across all locations in that single day.
“We hope to do this on an annual basis, and hopefully even do international projects with Habitat for Humanity,” Fatema said. “We have a great number of community members in Africa, Pakistan, India. And so it would be nice to be able to do Build Days of larger projects with Habitat in those countries.”
Habitat for Humanity of Greater Lowell is now accepting applications for Units 6 & 7 on 70 Boston Road from prospective families. Applicants will be entered into a lottery-based system, with priority given to local families who live, work, or have children enrolled in Westford Public Schools. Applications are due on August 28 and may be mailed or dropped off in person at 68 Tadmuck Road, Unit 1, Westford, MA 01886. For more information visit lowellhabitat.org/homeownership.
“We’ve loved this barn project. It’s been very unique, and we’ve done other single family homes in Westford before. We’d love to do more, and we hope that Westford residents and surrounding residents just keep showing up for us, volunteering, donating, and engaging with us and attending our events,” Carlisle said.
Editor’s Note: This article contains minor edits from its previous publication, on behalf of Ellen Harde. It was originally published in the July 22, 2026 print edition of The Westford Villager.
