Gina Bourasa is founder of Building Hope, a non-profit she launched to help put hope back into people’s lives. Along with hope, she also wants to give them “strength, stability and self-reliance through continuous acts of compassion.” (Photo by Jill Davis Photography)
By Gaye Bunderson
Gina Bourasa sold houses as a real estate agent and helped build them as a CEO with a local Habitat for Humanity. Now, she builds hope into people’s lives.
Bourasa presently serves as president of Fuller Center for Housing – Building Hope Project, an organization she founded in 2021. The evolution of her founding the non-profit actually began with Habitat for Humanity.
“I stepped away from real estate about seven years ago to serve as CEO of the local Canyon County Habitat chapter until they could find someone else. Six months turned into a year – the timeline kept expanding. I stayed with it because I wanted to prepare the next person.
“But that’s where I found my purpose,” Bourasa said.
“Belonging to a large franchise, you have to do what they say, when they say it,” she explained. “I wanted all of our funds to be used for our local communities. I knew what God wanted me to do: to sew seeds into the community.”
She switched from Habitat to an organization called Fuller Center for Housing, whose primary mission is affordable housing. Fuller Center provided a more grassroots platform that the board and Bourasa felt more aligned with. Two short years after founding Fuller Center for Housing – Building Hope Project, she then founded another non-profit called Building Hope Project Inc. Bourasa runs both organizations simultaneously. While the focus of Fuller Center Building Hope Project is affordable housing and affordable home repairs, the sole mission and vision of Building Hope Project Inc. is about building hope in people’s lives and continuous acts of compassion in the community.
Bourasa is a cancer survivor and knows what it’s like to hope for a good outcome. “I wanted to put hope back into people’s lives,” she said. “I always wanted to help people, and now I’ve been doing it for 30 years or so. For 10 years I wanted to start a non-profit, and I was going to call it Building Hope – and I knew that’s what it was going to be,” she said.
She builds more than just houses now…she builds HOPE. That can look quite different to different people; but in the broadest sense, according to Bourasa, “We help all people in need who have lost hope.
“As it says on the website at buildinghopeidaho.org, ‘we want to build hope, strength, stability and self-reliance through continuous acts of compassion’. Building Hope is dedicated to giving a HAND UP, not a hand-out.”
They help all people in need who have lost their spirit of optimism, such as homeless veterans or the elderly – or in fact anyone.
Bourasa maintains a Building Hope office at Homes of Idaho Inc. in Eagle. The owner, Colby Lampman, is on the Building Hope Board of Directors along with his wife Kassy.
“He lets me have my office and he’s been a board member for the last four years. He and his wife are amazing leaders. All the board members are Christian and involved in church. We’re unapologetically a Christian organization,” Bourasa stated.
Her experience with a life of faith began in childhood.
“I went to Christian school all my life. My parents have been married for 60 years, and they taught me to respect people. They taught me to love God, work hard, and help people. My dad made me and my brother workaholics and instilled in us the great importance of character.”
She regularly puts in 18- to 20-hours a day, she said, but she has no complaints. “I love my life. I’m so content. I’m busy. I’m happy.”
The 59-year-old Bourasa is passing on the family work ethic. Bourasa takes her 9-year-old daughter Nevaeh (actually her adopted granddaughter) along with her on service projects. “She always goes with me. I’m trying to give her a servant’s heart while she’s young. She’s changed my life as much as I’ve changed hers.”
The Building Hope board members and friends often head to downtown Boise to help the homeless. “We give them water, food, and a card with encouraging messages,” stated Bourasa. “I was fearful at first, but we are acting as the hands and feet of Christ and we get a good reaction.
“This is a ministry. It’s exhausting. It’s hard to be positive all the time – we encounter needs that are greater than what we can do.”
Bourasa is never entirely off the clock when it comes to service. Despite her homeless ministry and her hours-long commitment to Building Hope, she recently discovered she had a very needy neighbor – and in fact, the neighbor was in need of food.
“Here I am,” she explained, “passing out ‘meals of hope’ to strangers and I didn’t know a neighbor wasn’t eating. I took her a bag of cutie oranges and she said that if she only ate a half a day, she could make them last for three weeks.
“The woman, in her late 70s, is on a fixed income and she cried when I gave her some food – she hadn’t eaten in several days. She’s on my radar. I look out for her now.”
Also, God put women who are in a recovery program on her heart.
“I take care packages to the recovery centers with our cards in them, telling the people they have purpose. Ninety-five percent of what we do the public doesn’t know about, and no, we don’t do it to get the attention.”
Building Hope used to be funded by sales at Caldwell’s ReClaim Store, a home improvement store that sold new and gently used items to the public at a fraction of the retail cost. But the ReClaim Store shut on March 1.
Explained Bourasa: “It was becoming more than what we could do. It became a full-time business and was taking away from our mission. We had it open for 14 years, so it was a hard decision.”
The store helped fund the ministry but became too much to handle. Funding now comes solely from grants and donations from businesses. “If an elderly person or a veteran needs a ramp, a business may donate the products and the labor.”
How did she learn her skills: meeting the public, seeking funding, reaching out to the hopeless, and connecting with those who can help?
“I’ve been in the area all my life and I have strong ties to the community. I love shaking hands and telling our story – I’ll tell anybody who’ll listen. People know me and they trust me. I love my job. When I get up every day, I know I’m going to help somebody, but I don’t always know who. I want to make a difference in people’s lives,” Bourasa said, stating making a difference can be as small as a smile or an encouraging word or as big as the generous purchase of groceries.
Acts of service, mixed with hope, can go a long ways.
What does hope look like for people? It depends.
Building Hope constructed a wheelchair ramp for a veteran – “and that was as important to him as the boxes of food for my neighbor.”
During the holiday season, Building Hope partners with KTSY for its Christmas campaign for the needy. It also works with Operation Grateful Hearts, providing “holiday meals of hope.” The non-profit does these things all year long; but during the holidays, it works with two selected organizations “for a bigger impact,” said Bourasa. To help out or for more information, email [email protected]. Her website is at buildinghopeidaho.org.
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