I and Casita Linda’s Board of Directors, on behalf of all the families we have served, thank you for your generosity. We are extremely grateful to those of you who have involved not only yourselves but have invited your family and friends to support us financially. Our ability to provide adequate housing for those living in extreme poverty in Mexico simply would be impossible without you.
We are finishing our 46th casita as I write, and slowly but surely, with your help and that of others, we are developing the internal infrastructure we need to most effectively meet our broad goal of altering the destiny of poverty for the families for whom we are able to build these modest homes.
We now have three casita models on the same footprint (small, medium, and large) and are thus able to better adjust the casita size to a family's actual needs. We have this year also been organizing a donor database to enable us to more systematically reach out to and keep in touch with all those good people who have been so generous over the years. We are visiting each family for whom we have built a casita to assure everything is in good working order, that children are in school, and that everyone has enough to eat. The smiles on the faces of Maria del Pilar and her two daughters, Maria Cristal and Karla, tell the story.
None of our officers or members of our Board of Directors receive wages or other benefits. The only individuals who receive any pay are the individuals on our 4 member Mexican construction team, and our Assistant Director, Lucia Wright Contreras, also a Mexican. Lucia graduated recently from the University of Guanajuato and is a bilingual architect with a strong background in building more adequate housing for those living in extreme poverty. We operate on a budget that is very carefully managed, and more than 90% of your contribution goes directly toward the construction of casitas.
This has been a particularly lean year for Casita Linda, and we are of course hopeful that you and your friends or members of your family will be able to support our work this next year. We are very appreciative of your past donations.
Let's hope 2012 brings more peace to the world and that the least fortunate among us are helped in some way through the generosity of individuals like you.
Links:
Casita Linda, A.C. October 30, 2011
Quarterly Project Report www.casitalinda.org
I am happy to report that Casita Linda just recently completed building our 43rd home for the desperately poor living in this area of Central Mexico.
In addition to bringing you up to date on several of our newest families for whom we have built homes, I am excited to report that we are well on our way to completing a record nine houses in 2011. As noted in our Fall Newsletter, with the completion of this casita, a total of 48 individuals, one as young as four months of age, will have been placed in small, safe and secure Casita Linda homes thus far in 2011.
We are very proud of this achievement and of our Mexican construction team, our volunteer coordinators, and our short-term visiting volunteers who stop by to help us while they are vacationing in San Miguel de Allende. However, if it were not for the incredible generosity and continuing support of our donors there would be little to celebrate. We truly depend on your financial contributions. And there is no such thing as a “too small” donation. Every donation makes a difference for a family in need of adequate housing. Pictured below are “before” and “after” pictures that reflect the improved housing Casita Linda provides with your help:
Please click on the 1st attachment --- "Before"
Please click on the 2nd attachment --- ""A Proud Family"
We are now on the 5th day of building Casita 44. Because of the needs of the Gomez family and the fact that there had been a partial foundation previously built on their property, we slightly modified our medium size casita to take advantage of the existing construction. This enabled us to proceed more rapidly than normal and allowed us to take full advantage of the layout of the lot.
Thanks to you and other donors, Aguilar Gomez and his family now have a small home that is safe and secure, and which will protect them from the upcoming freezing temperatures common during the winter months. Many do not realize it but because San Miguel de Allende is located in Mexico’s high desert area in the middle of the country, winter temperatures often approach the 32 degree level at night in the countryside. Here are a couple of young sisters delighting in their new sleeping loft:
Please click on the 3rd attachment --- ""Sisters Survey Their New Loft"
There are countless others like Aguilar and his family. They are hardworking and industrious people whose fundamental quality of life would improve if they lived in a Casita Linda house. And so we ask for your help in making 2012 a record-breaking year in the annals of Casita Linda’s history. Your generosity, when combined with the gifts of others, will allow us to build at least 8 new homes during the coming year. The need is truly urgent.
We invite you to share your thoughts and ideas with us. How might we further improve the living circumstances of these desperately poor families? Please add a comment to our report, or email your questions and suggestions to us directly: info@casitalinda.org
William Greenfield, Executive Director, Casita Linda, A.C., San Miguel de Allende, MX
Links:
Casita Linda, A.C. July 31, 2011
Quarterly Project Report www.casitalinda.org
We are happy to report that Casita Linda just recently completed building our 41st home for the desperately poor living in this area of Central Mexico.
One of the criteria we apply in selecting a family is that they or members of their extended family are willing to contribute in as many ways as possible to the construction of their casita. This help takes many forms, including the digging of the foundation, helping to carry bricks and mortar to those who are building the walls, assisting with painting the metal doors and window frames built on site, soaking bricks in water to get them ready to use, and contributing a few tortillas to inspire the work crew.
Pictures of the family members and other volunteers are included in the attached document. Please open this to see the pictures listed below:
Ceci and her family
Ceci's extended family helping to mix cement and carry it to our work crew
Ana Cristina, about 6 years old, carries a bucket of cement just her size
Ana on a ladder, handing up the bucket of cement to Sid, one of our regular volunteers
Enrique, an 11 year old, comes after school and on Saturdays to help us. We built a casita for his family last year
Pablo, another volunteer learning new skills as he helps build a Patsari stove
Ceci paints a coat of primer on the metal window frames built on site
Little Remedios, the youngest in the family, is not to be left out as she carries a brick
Another young daughter shovels sand into a wheelbarrow, showing a new volunteer how it's done
Ceci and her daughters cook up a few tortillas as a snack for the work crew
There are countless other families of hardworking and industrious people whose fundamental quality of life would improve if they lived in a Casita Linda house. And so we ask for your help in making 2011 a record-breaking year in the annals of Casita Linda’s history. Your generosity, when combined with the gifts of others, will allow us to build at least 7 new homes this year. The need is truly urgent.
Let us know if you would like to receive a progress report (with photos) as we build our casitas.
We invite you to share your thoughts and ideas with us. How might we further improve the living circumstances of these desperately poor families? Please add a comment to our report, or email your questions and suggestions to us directly: info@casitalinda.org
William Greenfield, Executive Director, Casita Linda, A.C., San Miguel de Allende, MX
Links:
Casita Linda, A.C. April 29, 2011
Quarterly Project Report www.casitalinda.org
I am happy to report that Casita Linda just recently completed building our 38th home for the desperately poor living in this area of Central Mexico.
In addition to bringing you up to date on several of our newest families for whom we have built homes, I am excited to report that we have improved our ability to tailor the size of our homes to the specific needs of the family to be served.
Up until recently we have been tied to a “one size fits all” model. This works fine when the family being served is large and needs all of the space in our regular casita – about 600 square feet, including two sleeping lofts.
Working with a University of Guanajuato architect, our construction team has figured out a way to use the same basic footprint as our regular casita, 13’ x 26’, but to modify it in two ways, making two other size casitas a possibility. What we now call the “medium” sized casita is 338 square feet, and it has no sleeping lofts. We simply lowered the barrel roof by about 6’, eliminating the lofts, resulting in a one-story house. We can still divide the space in various ways.
The third version, the “small” sized casita, is approximately 286 square feet. This is one-story, like the “medium”, except it is 4’ shorter in length. This size would be perfect for an elderly couple with no children, or a single mother with one child. Being able to choose among these three alternative sizes allows us to build in a more cost-effective manner, enabling our donors’ contributions to stretch further, serving more people and using less labor and materials.
We also have improved our building material. The bricks we use now are a step up from what we used previously. We did many houses with adobe blocks but they were very heavy and the walls required bracing (buttresses) to support the roof. While adobe is more "green" than the usual red brick, it is not as green as most people think. The adobe is laced with a petroleum product in order to waterproof it.
The grey block we now use consists of "tabicon", a material made from pumice. The tabicon is mixed with cement in a 10-1 ratio and voilá, we have a very light, very green, very strong brick with good insulating properties. There is less weight on the foundation, they are cheaper by about a third, and they are all exactly the same size and require no special preparation (enabling faster construction).
We are now on the 5th day of building Casita 39. Because of the needs of this extended family this house is the “regular” size, but is configured with three rooms on the ground floor, each with an exterior door. The two end rooms will be private accommodations for two different families while the center room is a sheltered common space which also has access to the loft, where a third family grouping will live.
Thanks to you and other donors, Fidencio and his extended family now have a small home that is safe and secure, and which will protect them from the severe winter weather and the upcoming rainy summer months.
There are countless others like Fidencio and his family. They are hardworking and industrious people whose fundamental quality of life would improve if they lived in a Casita Linda house. And so we ask for your help in making 2011 a record-breaking year in the annals of Casita Linda’s history. Your generosity, when combined with the gifts of others, will allow us to build at least 7 new homes this year. The need is truly urgent.
We invite you to share your thoughts and ideas with us. How might we further improve the living circumstances of these desperately poor families? Please add a comment to our report, or email your questions and suggestions to us directly: info@casitalinda.org
William Greenfield, Executive Director, Casita Linda, A.C., San Miguel de Allende, MX
Links:
Casita Linda, A.C. January 1, 2011
Quarterly Project Report www.casitalinda.org
There were more than 18 days this past December (2010) when the temperature dropped below freezing at night, in the campo around San Miguel de Allende. That is cold by anyone’s definition!
Many of the families we serve are living in circumstances that don’t provide shelter from these freezing temperatures. This puts them at severe risk, and these conditions are particularly difficult for the elderly or for those who are already suffering from one illness or another.
I am happy to report that Casita Linda just recently completed building our 35th home for the desperately poor living in this area of Central Mexico.
Thanks to you and other donors, Juana Rendon and her family now have a small home that is safe and secure and which will protect them from the severe weather. We designed their home with a special room where Maria de la Luz, their disabled daughter, is able to do her weaving of small baskets to help supplement the family income. Thanks to your generosity, Juana, Maria, and her younger brothers Juan Gabriel and Mario Fernando, will have decent shelter this winter and for the foreseeable future.
Unfortunately, there still are many other families like Juana’s who need basic housing. The cold nights have an intense impact on the homeless. The fortunate ones live in humble dwellings covered by found pieces of tin or plastic tarp. The less fortunate families live in the open air, huddled together to battle the cold nights after the sun sets in this high desert region.
There are countless others like Juana and her family. They are hardworking and industrious people whose fundamental quality of life would improve if they lived in a Casita Linda house. And so we ask for your help in making 2011 a record-breaking year in the annals of Casita Linda’s history. Your generosity, when combined with the gifts of others, will allow us to build at least 7 new homes this year. The need is truly urgent.
We invite you to share your thoughts and ideas with us. How might we further improve the living circumstances of these desperately poor families? Please add a comment to our report, or email your questions and suggestions to us directly: info@casitalinda.org
William Greenfield, Executive Director, Casita Linda, A.C., San Miguel de Allende, MX
Links:
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San Miguel de Allende,
Guanajuato,
Mexico
http://www.casitalinda.org
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