NOMADS History
NOMADS began in 1988 in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. Methodists from Illinois, Iowa and Indiana were Winter Texans and someone finally said, "I am bored, there must be some good we can do here." So they approached local Methodist churches and offered their services. That first year there were 24 members who completed five projects in Texas and Oklahoma. NOMADS grew as an all volunteer organization under the North Central Jurisdiction of the United Methodist Church. Membership grew, and in 2001, NOMADS incorporated and became an organization under the General Board of Global Ministries. NOMADS also contracted a full time program administrator and started offering summer/fall projects in addition to winter/spring projects. After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, NOMADS began doing disaster recovery work in Mississippi. Currently, NOMADS offers about 175 projects each year and has over 900 active members. NOMADS on regular, disaster and drop-in projects donate a total of more than 110,000 hours of volunteer labor each year. Multiple Disaster Rebuilding Projects are staffed each year, in various locations around the country, where needed.