Habitat World Online


Through innovative programs like Save and Build, Habitat is reaching even poorer people. Pictured here, families in Manila, Philippines, survive in tents.

Meeting Critical Needs
Habitat Adapts to Reach Poorer Families
by Kathryn Reid

	What You Can Do: • Support Habitat's "Save and Build" program, in which your gift helps match the savings of local groups. Visit www.habitat.org to donate securely online. • Visit the Catholic Campaign for Human Development's web site to learn about poverty in the United States. Find it at www.povertyusa.org. • Learn more about the plight of the poor around the world. Go to www.worldbank.org/poverty/voices/index.htm to read first-hand accounts from "Voices of the Poor."

G.A. Dayawathi calculates her profits from coconut trees, two garden plots overflowing with herbs and vegetables and the bags she weaves from spiny leaves that she boils, soaks, dries and dyes. Her daughter and husband work in the garden, too, and he hires out as a day laborer every chance he gets. Though hard-working and frugal, they struggle to make ends meet.

The story is the same for many Sri Lankan gem miners, spice and tea plantation workers and rice farmers. With an income of less than US$1 a day (approximately 96 rupees) they are among Asia's "poorest of the poor." The World Bank reports that of the 1.4 billion people in South Asia, more than 40 percent fall into that category.

Many have lived all their lives in houses made of mud and sticks. The hazards--sometimes life threatening, always disheartening--include snakes and insects, collapsing walls and leaky roofs that take constant repair. Before partnering with the Galle affiliate of Habitat for Humanity Sri Lanka, Dayawathi's family lived in a tumble-down hut with deteriorating clay walls that crawled with white ants and centipedes. Now her family is secure in a small concrete-block house with a sound metal roof and a wooden door that shuts tight.

"Select the families with the greatest need first" is the mandate for local Habitat organizations in Sri Lanka. Yet at 850 rupees (US$8.17), the average monthly mortgage payment on a Habitat house would be too high for a family making less than US$400 a year. Extending the payment period would risk the burden of inflation.

"There had to be a solution, a way to reduce the cost of construction so that lower-income people could afford decent housing," says Tony Senewiratne, national director of Habitat for Humanity Sri Lanka. "Save and Build has evolved to answer that need." In the Save and Build method, villagers save money in small groups and build their houses in stages. They save on building materials by collecting and making as many of those materials as possible.


	G.A. Dayawathi, a Habitat homeowner in Sri Lanka, built her house by pooling her savings with a group of homeowners.

More than 500 Habitat savings groups have been formed in Sri Lanka. "Because the groups take so much of the responsibility, we are serving a lot more families without having to add a lot of staff," says Senewiratne. The Save and Build concept is being applied in 16 other countries in Asia.

"Can you save the price of a cup of tea a day?" Prageeth Jayantha Perera, Anuradhapura affiliate coordinator, asks villagers who want to start a Habitat for Humanity savings group. By saving 15 rupees a day (17 cents U.S.) and working together, they can construct core houses for all 12 families in two years. Within three more years, each family will pay off their no-profit, no-interest loan. The houses will be theirs, free and clear, and their repayment will be used to build more houses.

Perera explains that group members can start making bricks and collecting sand and other materials. Habitat for Humanity will help them organize and build and provide matching funds so they can hire skilled masons and purchase roofing sheets, blocks and cement. After six months of saving, the group could be ready to start building.

Together they will decide which members' houses to build first. Some group members have foundations in place and may build their core house on a third or a half of that space. When everybody in the group has dry, secure shelter they can add on.

Dayawathi saved for two years before her core house was built. Only eight months later the final two rooms are nearing completion. "This is happiness--to sleep in our new room," she says.

G.M. Irangani Perera, another member of Dayawathi's savings group, will soon have her house finished, too.

"Before this house we lived in a rental house with four families--16 people--and it was no bigger than this. We paid 300 rupees (US$3.13) for rent and it was in terrible condition," she said. Her mortgage payment is 400 rupees (US$4.17), the same amount as the savings she contributed to the group before her house was built. At the beginning she had no hope for better living conditions, but when she met the savings group and came to understand the program, she had confidence that the group would succeed. "Everyone was working toward the same goal," she explains.

When she and her husband bought their land about six years ago, it took every bit of money they could save. They thought about collecting materials to build a plank house, but ruled it out. Without Habitat for Humanity, they would have left the land to their two sons, hoping that their dreams of homeownership could be achieved in the next generation.

Now Perera dreams of a kitchen and a good well like her neighbor's, maybe even an attached bathroom. She smiles and shakes her head, amazed at what her family has accomplished--and the audacity of her dreams.