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The grant will be used to fund the acquisition of one or more of the following equipment needs (used truck, brick maker, cement mixer, and generator) which are critical to the start-up of a cooperative home building operation in Rio Grande, Oaxaca, Mexico. Esperanza International's Mexican partner, Fundación Esperanza de Mexico (FEM), is starting up a new community development operation in Oaxaca similar to its 27-year old successful operation (more than 450 homes in last 15 years) in Tijuana, Mexico, which consists of a social worker organizing groups of families living in working-poor neighborhoods into a savings cooperative, coordinating visits from U.S. volunteer groups to work with the families to build small, earthquake- and fire-resistant concrete block homes, and supervising the block manufacturing and construction of such homes, which require minimal skilled labor input. Each family must save at least 10% of the material cost for its home and borrows the rest from funds initially provided from the volunteer group fees, and then pays back the loans over a 5-7 year period—thus creating a revolving micro-credit fund that will perpetuate the process. Each family must also contribute labor to build its own home as well as homes for other families in the cooperative.
FEM has already organized two cooperative groups totaling 25 families of indigenous farm laborers in Rio Grande, which families are part of a larger cooperative that has acquired land for housing, on which no homes have yet been built due to the inability to save funds for materials and the lack of knowledge of how to construct safe homes. Several U.S. volunteer groups have already indicated interest in work-visits in Oaxaca, and If FEM can acquire the initial start-up equipment needed for construction, construction on the first houses could occur as early as late summer 2010.
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