Building for the Future

		More than half of Mexico's population lives on less than $2 per day, according to the World Bank.

Hosting a Jimmy Carter Work Project entails coordinating a never-ending list of tasks ranging from managing visa applications to negotiating protocol requirements of heads of state--not to mention construction. In short, it's a lot of work.

But the upside is an unparalleled opportunity to raise awareness of Habitat and the issues surrounding substandard housing. JCWP 2004 project director Kip Scheidler offers some perspective on the legacy of the JCWP:

"Having hosted JCWP 2004, HFH Mexico is literally being invited to sit at the table to debate low-income housing issues in Mexico. Building 13,000 houses didn't get us there; but having hosted JCWP 2004, the Mexican national program is now getting the respect it has long deserved. And HFH Mexico now has a database of more than 3,000 Mexican names, people who volunteered in JCWP 2004.

"Finally, HFH Mexico has already signed a three-year, $1 million-plus agreement with the Televisa Foundation, the largest Mexican donor to JCWP 2004, and other multi-year agreements are in the works.

"Those 150 houses have effectively put HFH Mexico on the national map. The overall impact of those houses on hopefully hundreds of thousands of Mexican lives will be the true testimony to the success of this year's JCWP."