Tijuana Housebuilding Project
"Building Peace, Hammering for Justice"
Tijuana Housebuilding 2008
Click to continue to this year's project page
Previous years
2007: Agents of Change
2006: TRANSMISSION
2005: "Si Quieres Paz, Trabaja por la Justica"
2004: "Un mundo de cambio en sus manos"
2003: Breaking Borders, Building Community
About
The Newman Center Catholic Community has hosted the annual Tijuana Housebuilding Project for over ten years. Over 60 members of the community, including students, volunteer their time to make this project a success. The project is done through Esperanza International.
About Esperanza
In 1986 Esperanza International started community development work in Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico. As a non-profit agency with neither political nor religious affiliations, it takes a bi-national approach to addressing regional problems.
The principal objective of Esperanza is development through both self-reliance and community assistance, manifested most evidently through housing projects in the neighborhoods. The strength of these projects is community participation, where families work with the decision-making, direction, and administration of loan funds, and also physically serve in block-making for their home construction. Such a method strengthens the community by promoting dignity, solidarity, trust and self-sustainability.
In the various colonias of TJ, the fruits of Esperanza projects can be seen. Community centers (with computer access), common kitchens, libraries, pre-schools and multiple purpose buildings are just a few examples of the development resulting from neighborhoods dedicated to their own betterment. Most of these projects, especially the housing, are supported through a program called Fondo de Ahorro para Vivienda (FAV), which provides savings funds for housing. This in itself demonstrates the Esperanza philosophy of communal involvement: together, the community decides which family’s house is the next to build, the family then repays the loan out by their own means, which is recycled into the housing fund for the next houses. This financing method ensures that homes will continue to be built and communities concerned for its neighbors will grow through Esperanza.
This is where we as a community at UCSD come in: we assist not only through financial resources, but physical ones (our bodies) as well. We fundraise $18,000 largely to cover the transportation and housing of 64 individuals that will take on this educational and spiritual journey, and also as a donation to the FAV in order to contribute to the hope and progress of our local region.