Project Report
| Jul 31, 2017
Real Change
By Nancy Wynne | co-founder, treasurer
![GHA Director, Patricia Macias, with recipients]()
GHA Director, Patricia Macias, with recipients
Guatemala Housing Alliance has been busy building a home for a family nearly monthly during the last year. When there is a lull we take on the task of replacing roofs or laying more floors. Volunteers with only a short time to visit the area are great motivation for a floor. With just a day or two they can make a change that significantly benefits a family.
Imagine a typical dirt floor...bumpy and uncleanable, alive with pests you can see and parasites that you cannot. Unhealthy. Seasonally muddy.
And imagine a relatively easy fix....a cement or natural floor. Easy, but financially out of reach for so many families. Your donation makes a real difference in the comfort and health of a family. They do not take it lightly and member of the family always works at the side of our mason.
Come stir some mortar with us. You'll love the relationships you form.
![floor before change]()
floor before change
![mixin' the mortar]()
mixin' the mortar
![laying it down]()
laying it down
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May 1, 2017
Trial and Error
By Nancy Wynne | co-founder and treasurer, GHA
![Bajareque home with floor extending into to porch]()
Bajareque home with floor extending into to porch
You may have read in our reports over the last 18 months that GHA has made a real commitment to build in a sustainable, earth-healthy manner. Towards that end we have been building homes of bajareque....wattle and daub. These are beautiful structures that are stable and we are proud of our advances. Still to be mastered, though, are easy-to-maintain earthen floors. Floors just take a lot of abuse and need constant cleaning and care. In our last full home build, our 31st, we experimented with an earth and lime floor but it dried with too many fissures and we have had to replace it with cement. As durable as cement is, it's manufacture is onerous to the atmosphere. We will continue our quest.
This particular fundraiser to which you have contributed funds floors in homes that are already sufficient, save the floors. These are in addition to the bajareque homes we build from scratch. The need for floors in the town of San Pablo la Laguna is seemingly inexhaustible and your donations have improved the health and comfort of many families.
If you feel compelled, help us continue our work. Donate. Or better yet: sponsor a floor AND come to Guatemala and build it along with us.
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![living conditions before GHA and YOUR help]()
living conditions before GHA and YOUR help
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Jan 20, 2017
There are floors, and then there are floors...
By Nancy Wynne | co-founder
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A good floor is about health and comfort and general well being. The first home that I was a party to building in Guatemala was for the family of Olga and Teodoro. Olga was pregnant at the time with her 4th child and was so delighted that this would be the first child to not have a dirt floor to eat.
If you've been following Guatemala Housing Alliance's facebook page and website you'll know that 14 months ago we made the big leap to more sustainable building. Cement production is a huge burden on the environment and we chose to change from building cement block homes to building the walls with local natural products: a frame of cypress or bamboo, cane, adobe mud, pumice from the neighboring volcanos, lime, pine needles. The floor, though, has remained of cement because we haven't yet found a suitable, easy to maintain, and inexpensive alternative. This very month we are doing our first experiments with natural floors, and we'll let you know how they go.
How to do well while doing good? How to be gentle to the earth while housing vulnerable people?
Thanks you for your support. It is life changing.
![a healthy environment for a child]()
a healthy environment for a child
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