Habitat World Online


This newly constructed Habitat house sits next to the substandard house the partner family will soon vacate.

Peaks and Valleys (Continued)

"Before, we only had one room," Dalila says, "and the family is so big (13 people) that sometimes we would have to share that room with other people. Living here is wonderful. The work area"--her husband's loom--"is separate from the bed, and that is nicer."

Eight-year-old Anthony Rodriguez, whose grandfather is helping his single mother of three build a Habitat home in Chiantla, near the city of Huehuetenango, said that in the new house he will have a place to play and a place to study, and that "no one is going to tell me what to do and when to do it"--his mother excepted, presumably.

Habitat's expertise is in housing, and it is not possible to make too big a deal about the benefits of building with people in need in Guatemala, neither in recounting the successes nor in tabulating all that remains to be done. But housing is only one component of battling poverty--hence the Habitat for Humanity International board of directors' approval of an alliance with the ONE Campaign, hence the approval of a five-year strategic plan that carefully spells out an emerging new role for Habitat as a catalyst, as a partner, as a facilitator.

In Guatemala, partnerships already play an important role.

"We are always looking at how we can make things better," Samayoa says, "always looking at how we can diversify our products and services. So, for example, we are working with a foundation in Switzerland that is trying to help widows, widowers and orphans. We are going to supply the land, and they are going to supply (money for) the houses. We are going to build 42 houses in a colonia, and we are going to have a common area for agricultural production--for pigs and chickens and fruits and vegetables. Another local nongovernmental agency is going to supply the plants and animals so these people will have an income.

"The idea is that this will be a self-sufficient community," Samayoa explains. "The idea is that there will be little workshops--one that might make bricks, another that might build doors, all at slightly lower prices. This community would be stand-alone, but the wider community of which it is a part would also be buying from these people, making the colonia totally sustainable.

"It will be a cooperative effort. They will have their own van, their own bus, their own gas station, their own store," he notes.

The co-op venture is still in the planning stages, with Habitat officials working to iron out the wrinkles of communal land use and side-by-side animal husbandry. But the partners are also, fearlessly, forging ahead. "We are now working on the plans for a bigger colonia," Samayoa says, "with 95 houses and where everyone has a job for the benefit of the larger community."


	Habitat homeowner Dalila Salanic, right, and Maria Salanic (a cousin of Dalila's husband Erick Salanic) do embroidery to earn money for the family.

Habitat Guatemala will take care of the housing component of this larger co-op, and will work with other agencies on the rest, including financing to help cottage entrepreneurs get started.

"We are working with the families," Samayoa says, "on an investment model. The idea is that cooperative members would each be investing...$5 a month in whatever project the cooperative was currently doing. It is an investment, and they get the benefit over the long term. Everyone would pay their $5 for... the gas station, and when that is up and running, they would invest in the next project. Basically, what they are doing is investing in themselves."

This is a huge step in the right direction given that so many Guatemalans are involved in their own independent ventures that depend on middlemen for both raw materials and marketing _ and are getting the short end of the stick. Dalila Salanic, for example, sews beautifully decorated indigenous clothing. It takes her about three hours to complete a blouse, for which she is paid 10 quetzales--about US$1.20. The blouse subsequently sells for some 200 quetzales, about US$24. But she and other self-employed crafters cannot get far enough ahead financially to buy a sufficient supply of cloth to eliminate the middleman, nor can they afford the time and travel to market their own goods, to say nothing of the complexity of that undertaking.

Shoemaker Victor Aurdio Cohop is in the same boat. Living in a new Habitat house in Cantel as he struggles to put his once middle-class life together after it was scattered by Hurricane Stan, Cohop is slowly replacing the equipment he lost in an October mudslide from the $1 he pockets for making a pair of shoes--footwear that sells to the consumer for much more.

"It is very hard to budget," Petrie says. "These are families that are always willing to work, but there isn't always work to be had." Cohop's wife Leticia and her mother sew traditional clothing, and the four children pitch in as they can. "When there is work, they are at it 14, 16 hours a day.

"The idea for these folks," Petrie says of Cohop and his family, "is to get to the point where they are actually buying their own material, and they are actually selling it themselves so that they can get more money and get things working. But after the hurricane, all they had was the clothes on their back." The dream of business independence, Cohop estimates, is at least three years away.

"We are into building houses, houses, houses," Petrie says, "but we are beginning to look at the wider picture. We are trying to be the force that gets other agencies to come together. We have had some very good talks with Heifer International, with World Neighbors, Water for Life, with the Presbyterian Church, to try and get an integrated project together. But even though we are part of it, we are still doing what we are good at--housing."