SMU Habitat For Humanity is organizing a Global Villages Trip to Asunción, Paraguay from May 17 to 28 where they will fund and build a house where the Global Villages program is already well known.
Paraguay is the second poorest country in South America, with 40 percent of the people living below the poverty line.
This trip is the direct reflection of a three-tiered-goal statement SMU Habitat for Humanity embodies in all projects. Habitat strives to engage the SMU community through local builds, funding a house through a partnership with HFH International and enables SMU students to build a house abroad in South America.
Houses in the United States cost upwards of $60,000 while houses in Paraguay cost less than $18,800, making building abroad much more cost-efficient.
Habitat for Humanity is in the middle of a forward fundraising campaign, managing to raise $8,500 over the past three weeks. Habitat has been making great strides by presenting in front of the SMU finance committee, selling T-shirts and hosting dinner parties, but has still fallen short of their grand total by $20,000.
“The Habitat chapter has been under the radar for too long,” Co-President Katie Brattain said. “Other than organizing the Blitz Build, we have essentially been a non-entity on campus. That is changing. Ideally, our Global Villages program will grow and become an annual SMU event open to all students.”
Students participating on this trip will be active on the building site, digging and laying concrete to help construct a new house. Not only will interested students gain muscle mass, participants will obtain exposure to a new culture.
Students will have the opportunity to meet and work with other driven students while representing their school, state and country in South America.
“We are planning, funding and executing a Habitat build all in one semester,” Brattain said. “Raising money during this economically tumultuous time seems crazy to lots of people. However, my response is that we are not doing it in spite of the economy, but because of the economy.”
“There are increasingly greater needs to be met. In Paraguay, we can make a big difference with a reasonable sum of money. Some ask why; I ask why not.”
