MakerSpace + Home Heart Project

Several years ago Framingham MakerSpace members provided tools and labor to establish a woodworking shop and taught basic woodworking skills and Scratch computer programming at Bendición de Dios, a non-profit private school in Alotenango, Guatemala. While there, we visited some homes and were appalled at the living conditions. Rusted corrugated steel walls and roof, dirt floors, chickens and dogs roaming throughout, a single 6' x 8' bedroom for the entire family, an outdoor "kitchen" with a wood fired stove creating smoke that made breathing extraordinarily difficult.

Asociación Bendición de Dios has upgraded more than a hundred of these homes with a concrete bedroom and bathroom over the years, but the process has been necessarily piecemeal. Julio Garcia Gonzalez explained to us that land ownership was necessary in order to build a house, and few of their families have access to the required money.  

We were able to raise $30,000, and Julio bought enough land for a co-housing development for 15-20 homes with a playground and gardens. The land was cleared just before Covid hit. Since then he obtained permits for electricity and water to be delivered to the site. Construction of the perimeter wall has been completed; construction on the two-bedroom houses will begin once funding is obtained. Each house costs $8,000 for all materials, and the prospective home owners will help with the building. It is particularly exciting that the students who graduated from the carpentry program will make the doors and windows. The video below captures an architect’s rendering of the proposed housing.

February 2024 Update

One of the most exciting aspects of Under the Same Moon's February 2024 trip to Bendicion de Dios School in Alotenango was to observe the progress on the Home Heart building project.

The perimeter wall visible in the photo second from left, top row, was built by a mobilization of the whole school community, who passed the cinder blocks by hand to the masons, who set them in place.

Two separate companies were at work on the project in February. One team was excavating a well. We watched as two workers turned a crank that lowered a man equipped with bucket and shovel, forty meters down. After a while, the bucket came up, filled with dirt, and then lowered again. They expect to hit water at eighty meters. Clean running water will revolutionize the lives of the new residents, who presently pay for water delivered by truck to their homes, and some of whom use privies for sanitation.

A second team leveled the land on the sloping terrain, dug a trench, and laid the foundation. On our first visit to the site, one line of blocks was up. Two weeks later, the walls were almost to their designed height, a rapid transformation. The Guatemalan construction was assisted by two Under the Same Moon volunteers, Brian Sanders and Craig Martin, who helped level the terrain, construct the rebar, and mix the cement. You can see Craig posed with Julio and Brian with the wheel barrow. In the second row of pictures, third from left, students from Bendicion de Dios carry water for cement mixing. The photos show the only tools–shovels, wheel barrow, level. No power tools. The students and their parents will be volunteering throughout the construction.

The cost per house is a mere $10,000, mostly because labor costs are so low. We are paying upfront for everything, so there are no interest fees. Would you like to help build one? If you earmark a donation of $1,000 or more for the Home Heart project, you will transform the lives of several families for generations. Under the Same Moon has raised the money for three houses so far, and we hope to build two a year until sixteen homes are built.

The MakerSpace folks hope to return to work with the families on the next project phase. In order for that to happen, money for materials must be raised. Please help give our families a home. You can make a tax-deductible donation to The Home 💝 Heart Project today!

For more information about Under the Same Moon, visit our facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/UTSMGuatemala/.

For more information about Framingham MakerSpace, visit their facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/Framingham-Makerspace-193223204165086/