Community Builders

Greetings Community Builders!

Thank you everyone who joined us last week with Yarisleidy – Director of Community Development in Nicaragua. For those of you who missed it, you can watch the recording linked in the previous post. Next week, we will hear from Don Guadalupe Gadea, a Los Robles carpenter and mason who we contract on all our home construction projects. This is a rare opportunity to meet and greet someone who lives and works with us in rural Nicaragua. Be on the lookout for the invitation to this special get together next week. Until then, please stay safe and we hope you have a great weekend.

Thank you very much to all who joined our call with Yarisleidy on Thursday, July 30th.  For those that could not attend, please see here for the recording. Keep an eye out for future zoom invitations as we will look to do another virtual forum in the coming weeks. Thank you again and we hope you have a great day!

Welcome to the Building Community group! Back in May, you generously contributed to our efforts to build three homes for vulnerable families in rural Nicaragua. Over the next few months, we invite you to be a part of the construction process the homes.

We will hear from past project homeowners, meet the new families, virtually visit the hardware store to buy materials, talk with project coordinators, and much more. While we can’t travel to Nicaragua to build these homes in person, we can still be a part of the impact. Thanks again for being part of this special group!

Concepcion Aguilar Mesa (32) is a single mother of four who lives Los Robles, Nicaragua. As a young woman, she worked on local farms cooking and cleaning. As her family grew, she could not take them with her to work. Four years ago, she scraped up enough money to build a makeshift dwelling comprised of sheet metal walls, plastic tarp roof, and dirt floor.

In the wake of the socio-economic crisis that started in April 2018, widespread unemployment and rampant inflation undercut the ability of families to provide for themselves, much less care for their neighbors less fortunate like Concepcion. In response, our generous community of supporters came together to build a new, safe, and secure structure for her family.

We visited Conception earlier this year and are pleased to report she and her children are doing well. She has kept her home very clean, done some landscaping, and has built a shower area, and a chicken coop. With a renewed sense of empowerment and purpose, these home improvements are sure to be just the beginning. In addition, she has taken a more active role in the community, volunteering her time to work on other CC projects. 

Follow along this week as we revisit the construction of her home through Jon Thompson’s video diary.

The first home we built in Nicaragua was for Jaime Ramos and his family. His incredible story demonstrates the power of connecting people to resources and our collective capacity to affect change. We made the following video in December of 2017 to help raise funds for the construction. Sadly, Jamie’s injury has compounded and he has since become paralyzed in half his body. His wife continues to work and support the family, comforted by the fact that Jaime has a safe and secure place to manage his recovery.   

In this short clip, we see Jaime’s completed home. “Come on in!” he says, welcoming our team in for a tour. He truly is one of the most humble people you will ever meet. Building his home was such an incredibly rewarding experience for everyone involved that we began a program called Homes For Good to benefit other vulnerable families in Nicaragua. We will reintroduce you to some of these families in the coming weeks

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