In September this year Annapurna Recruitment donated £500 to Habitat for Humanity in order to fund the building of houses in Chile. We sponsored Reno Daigle, Head of Business Solutions at QBE European Operations to travel to Chile to help construct these houses. The Santiago “Our Children Return Home Project” is helping to build houses that allow children with disabilities to return home and live with their families, without worrying that they will become sicker as a result of a poor environment and poor quality housing.
Below is an update from Reno detailing his and the programmes progress over the last few months:
“I wanted to follow up to say Thanks for donating to Habitat for Humanity and the housing build in Chile that I went on in November & December. Without your support, we would not have had the funds to build 2 houses and allow 2 families to keep their disabled children at home and out of institutions.
As most of you know, Habitat is a global organisation that has built homes for over 4 million people worldwide. While they have helped a lot of families in the world, there are roughly 1.6 billion people who lack adequate shelter. For the first time in history, Habitat has been able to help over 100,000 families in a single fiscal year – in part because of programmes like the one that you & I supported in Santiago.
In Chile, most families are recommended to the local Habitat organisation by their town, government or through local support institutions or even through other non-profits that recognised that Habitat could help. In Chile, this specific programme is called “nuestros hijos vuelven a casa” (Our children come home).
Firstly, I have to say that the whole experience was really rewarding. The families were both very grateful for our help, and they found it hard to believe that strangers from a foreign country would give money to help someone they’ve never met, and “workers” would travel for thousands of miles (my flights took 16 hours) to help them keep their children living at home and out of institutions.
In the end we built 2 houses. The first house was for a little girl called Ignacia (Natchia for short) and her family. She is about 4 years old and has epilepsy that is quite severe. She also has some other issues, but they’re still investigating to try to determine the causes, as she can’t yet speak. However, I’m told that she is super hyper and wants to play all the time. She also got very attached to the team building her home and cried a lot when they were leaving.
The house build that I worked on was for a family with a little boy who is 6 called Vicente. Vicente has down syndrome but also he can’t see very well and is wheelchair bound. The family needed this because Vicente was outgrowing his little room and couldn’t stay at home without a change. This was reinforced by the fact that Vicente was in the hospital for most of the time we were there, and was only at home for a couple of days in the beginning and the last 2 days before we left.
In the end, what we built for Vicente’s family was more like an addition, as it was attached to the 4 room house they had before (which housed 11 people!). The work was started by a Canadian team that had volunteered for 2 weeks before we arrived, so the foundation and exterior walls were already completed. We took the work forward from there.
The overall goal was to make sure that Vicente had space and accessibility to be able to grow up at home and not have to be sent to an institution. The biggest room in the house was built to be large enough to allow him to have his bedroom but also all of the necessary equipment that he would need for the future (hoist, exercise equipment, etc).
Vicente’s family was extremely grateful, kind and helpful. For most of the time, Vicente’s aunt (Ofelia) took care of us. As Vicente’s mum has to work, Ofelia is also his primary caregiver during the daytime. While working onsite, Habitat provides food and lunch normally, but in Chile they asked the family to cook for us, etc, so they also have some responsibilities (in some cases the family also helps with the building itself). Ofelia had this responsibility for the whole week. At one point during the week in the afternoon Ofelia was cooking, but it wasn’t for us. The Habitat rep explained that the family often tries to cook food and give it to the homeless in the area, given that they are getting so much support, this was their way of “paying it forward”. Ofelia is in the picture with Vicente & his mum (Ofelia is wearing the black smock, Vicente’s mum is wearing the red shirt).
Ofelia was fun and outgoing throughout the week as she cared for us, but when we did the ceremony at the end to give them the new place, she was the first to cry – followed by most of the family and half of the volunteers. When the family spoke they wanted to make sure that we understood how important this was to them that Vicente could continue to live at home as he gets older.
With that, I want to reiterate that by giving money to support Habitat you have made a difference in the lives of those in need.”
Annapurna is committed to being different and giving back to the community. Annapurna Giving will be announced in January 2014 along with the charities we will be supporting in the coming year. For more information about our values please click here.
We hope for the continued success of Habitat’s project in Santiago and that many more families can benefit from the help they provide.
