Creating safer, healthier homes from the floor up
More than 50 million people in Latin America live on dirt floors.
Dirt floors can be breeding grounds for bacteria and parasites that cause respiratory disease and chronic diarrhea. When a household with dirt floors has children, that means the ground they play on is a health risk.
From their first crawl to their first steps, they are constantly exposed to germs. And their parents carry a constant burden: a mother has to think twice about letting her toddler play while she makes dinner, a father worries about the swirl of dust every time he swoops down to pick up his daughter.
Many families work to improve their homes over time, but limited budgets force them to choose which essential repair they can take on, leaving them stuck living with dirt floors.
That’s why we partner with families in Latin America to make this critical upgrade. Since 2022, we’ve partnered with families to replace more than 30,000 dirt floors with concrete.
After replacing their dirt floors, Eliana and her two kids are feeling healthier in their home in Cartagena, Colombia.
Evidence shows that this shift has a transformative impact across a household.
When families have clean, dry solid floors, parasitic infections in children dropped by 78%. As children spend less time sick and more time in school, their cognitive development scores jumped 36% or more.
The effects are equally profound for parents. When a home is easier to maintain and children are no longer ill, depression rates drop by 52% and stress is reduced by 45%.
For Eliana’s family, a concrete floor changed everything. Their home Cartagena, Colombia, would often flood, further contaminating their spaces. Between the dampness and the dust, her daughter Yeremis was often sick. Today, with a solid floor, the whole family has a clean, healthy place to live and play.
Fátima’s two kids love to play, too, and especially enjoy making art and drawing. Like Eliana, she and her husband had been working to improve her home when she partnered with us to put in a concrete floor. Now, she’s able to clean and organize her home much more easily – something every parent should be able to do. But her favorite change was the one she saw in her children.
“Now my kids look happier,” she says. “You can see the joy in them.”
Fátima and her two kids love creating art on their new, clean concrete floor in their home in Cartagena, Colombia.