Tuesday, June 21, 2016

Building Homes June + July 2016

We are building 4  NEW HOMES  in Barrio Blanco, Cabarete  Right Now .. between June 2, and July 23,2016!

Anyone can come by and jump in.  Just ask "Where is the Project?" , or "Where is Ron working?"  ..... then get ready to be accepted by 15 to 25 Dominicans and Haitians working together with lots of POSITIVE Energy !

We are building in two sites within Barrio Blanco ... one will be two story stuccoed block with a full home on each floor.  We are calling this "Norma's house" because she owned the land and will own the downstairs home.  Upstairs will be Michel's family.  Norma is our project cook, and Michel is a valued worker.

Everyone who receives a home with our efforts provides one full time worker daily 6 days weekly until we finish.  At the second site, "Efen's house" we are building a 2 story wood home and remodeling and expanding a studio home to be a full 2 bedroom for Lele's family.  During this we will be raising the roof  6 feet on two homes to create upstairs bedrooms.

All homes are built with money donated to Providing Opportunity to buy materials, and labor from Barrio Blanco residents.  We have torn down terrible scrap shacks and built 43 homes so far this way.  Everyone loves them, and they are solid.  Almost every home has a living room, bathroom, kitchen, 2-4 bedrooms and porch.  All have full septic systems below the home and all homes are raised 3 feet above ground to their floor to enclose the system and raise the interior above floodwaters.

Here are some pictures so far....

When clearing the land at Norma's, the ladies in the below picture earned themselves paying jobs

Below is where Efen and is family were living.









We tore this shack down


   Yes, that was a "home" on the left.

  After pouring footings, we began building our base which encloses our septic system which includes 2 primary and secondary tanks and leachfield
 
We removed the small remaining shack and added support to the home base.  After that, our tanks went in, they were sealed followed with rebar and below floor plumbing and vapor barrier.  On Monday, June 20th, we poured the concrete floor.

Back at Norma's house, after building our foogtings and block base and doing remaining prep work, we were ready for our drainfield stones.
 On top of our septic tanks we put plywood forms to pour concrete on top of. We leave a hole to climb in to remove the wood when the concrete is dry.

The people building walls above are standing on the floor that is already 4 feet above ground.
By the end of the week,  Norma's home was the new playground.

And clothes dryer

Sunday was haircut day

And time to relax
 Ahhhh.
To be fully current with "What's Now" ....

It is now Tuesday evening, June 21, 2016.  Norma's first floor walls are completed and we have a carpenter working to build the forms for her ceiling -- the second story floor.  This afternoon our first truckload of lumber from Santiago was ordered and hopefully will come in this evening.

We build with love in Barrio Blanco.  We build happy.  If you are in Cabarete ask for Barrio Blanco and come by.  Be a part.  If you want to chip in, our Paypal button is on the Donor tab, or write to (Ron) at ProvidingOpportunity@gmail.com for info.  Typically during building projects I send out weekly Project Updates to Donors so that they can see their money being put directly to work.

We do a lot more than build homes in Barrio Blanco, and wherever you are ... please jump in with us.  You will see direct improvements for whatever you do.  EVERYTHING  that is given to help this community goes directly in to Barrio Blanco.  All costs outside are paid separately from donations by one family.