“Our goal was not to get killed, to stay out of the way of the neighbors, just to stay warm, and try not to blow up the place.”
–Bernardo Arroyo, California
“Things were so dangerous. The schools were closed and we just stayed in the bushes and the hills because the fighters were destroying everything. …When I came back…we lived as best we could in the wreck. It was terrible at night because of the snakes.”
–Cresentie Mbeko, South Africa
“The home was in a bad area full of gangs and drug dealers. We feared for our safety.”
–Rebecca Spence, California
“I’ve been living with cockroaches and mice for a long time. We gave our
4-year-old son the kitchen to sleep in, but that’s where the rats were and we worried about disease.”
–Jong Rok Lee, Republic of Korea
Despite their far-flung geographic locations, these families had a few things in common: fear, insecurity, danger.
On a good day, their lives were consumed with getting by; on a bad day, with simple survival. They, like millions of others around the world, battled daily emergencies of health and safety needs. They subsisted, with little reason for hope, on the lowest rungs of psychologist Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
And then one day—after hard work, laced with tenacity and sheer grit—they became Habitat homeowners. Admittedly, a safe, decent and affordable house is not a panacea for every challenge Habitat families face. But without a doubt, it helps.
For these families, it surely provided a bold opportunity to step up on the hierarchical ladder. With freedom from fear, they could move beyond their obligatory obsession with basic survival. Now they can focus on things of higher value: peace, health, education, love, empowerment and self-esteem. And indeed they have. (Read their stories in the following pages.)
Lives transformed. With your help, that’s what Habitat for Humanity helps families accomplish every day.
Thanks for reading…and for building.
—Milana McLead is editor of Habitat World. |
“When a poor person dies of hunger, it has not happened because God did not take care of him or her. …It has happened because we did not recognize Christ, when, once more, he appeared under the guise of pain, identified with a man numb from the cold, dying of hunger, when he came in a lonely human being, in a lost child in search of a home.”
—Mother Teresa |
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