JOPLIN, Mo. — When executives with “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” contacted builder Sam Clifton about a project in Joplin, he told them it was a great idea, but building a single home wouldn’t send much of a message to a community that lost more than 7,000 of them to a devastating spring tornado.

So on Wednesday, work began on a project to build seven homes in seven days that will be featured on the popular ABC show. It is another effort by volunteers to reshape the southwest Missouri community that still in the early stages of recovering from the May 22 twister that killed 162 people, one of the worst tornadoes in U.S. history.

The homes, which are going up a few blocks from the city’s hospital, which was destroyed, will be far from opulent. Clifton, who is overseeing the project, said the new units will be functional, 1,300- to 1,800-square-foot homes, similar in size and style to many of the dwellings destroyed in the tornado.

“We want to help get the community going,” Clifton said. “Get some excitement going in the town. That’s my goal.”

The TV show typically rebuilds a single home for a family that has been struck with some tragic circumstances. In Joplin’s case, the seven homes are being built along the same street, just a few blocks from the hospital that was destroyed in the tornado.

“This is what we do,” said Diane Korman, senior producer for the program. “We look for families in trouble and how to help them.”

Korman said the show’s staff gathered on May 23, the day after the tornado, to discuss a project in Joplin. They contacted Clifton, with whom they had worked on a 2009 show in Ash Grove, Mo., and concurred with his assessment that the project needed to be bigger than one home.

The families getting the new homes range in size from two to six, and their stories are compelling.

They include single mother Crystal Whitely, who took cover with her three children in a bathtub. Two were killed, leaving only Whitely and her 4-year-old daughter, Keana. Joplin firefighter Kyle Howard was working the night of the tornado and didn’t know if his family survived, yet he rescued trapped victims and tended to injured people as he drove through the rubble to get home.