Extreme Hut Makeover Trip Report
October 2007
History:
In May 2007, we recognized that a few of our children under Extend Your Heart educational sponsorship program have become homeless because the huts they were living in have collapsed. These huts consist of dried leaves weaved together for walls & roofs and pounded dirt for floors. We started a pilot project “Extreme Hut Makeover” (EHM) to help these families rebuild their homes so the children and their families would have a safe and dry place to live.
Goal, Accomplishments, and Future Plans:
Our goal was to rebuild five huts which were divided into two phases. The first phase consisted of rebuilding two huts which were finished in October 2007. The second phase of the rebuilding of three other huts will resume after February 7, 2008 which is Tet (Vietnamese New Year).
The Holiday Season and the upcoming Tet have driven up the material costs. Originally, we planned a standard home to consist of the following with an estimated cost of $600USD:
Dimension: 13ft x 23ft
- The front wall built from bricks, the other 3 walls will be made out of weaved dried leaves.
- Cement floor (the old floor is pounded dirt)
- Galvanized steel roof
- 1 bathroom – the old huts didn’t have bathrooms.
Before we started the rebuilding process, the families had expressed that they can forego the bathrooms and instead they wished to have all four walls be built out of bricks for the same cost. We wanted to give each family four brick walls and a bathroom; however, with our current resources each family will choose what is best for them. From here on, we plan to increase the budget for each home to $700 which will cover the cost for a bathroom and four brick walls.
We are very happy to report that the first two families moved into their new homes in October 2007. Tuyet, Franco and I visited and inspected the two homes in November. Seeing the happy families and their visible gratitude brought so much joy to our hearts. Both families have expressed that if they work and save their entire life, they would not be able to afford to build a home like what were given to them.
We are very excited to announce the future plan for EHM project. We will continue to expand this project to cover all rural and poor areas in Viet Nam. To enable us to accomplish this goal without taking away from the main purpose of Extend Your Heart Foundation which is educational sponsorship, we have established another non-profit organization, Sowing Hope Foundation, specifically geared to building sustainable housing for the very poor in Viet Nam.
Acknowledgement and Gratitude:
We would like to take this opportunity to thank all our supporters for making the Extreme Hut Makeover Project a huge success. We saw the absolute need and wished to rebuild these huts but it is with your generous financial support that we were able to make our wish and the wishes of the poor families become a reality. Mere words are not enough to express the gratitude in our hearts and the hearts of these families. Thank you very much.
Affiliated Engineers, Inc. (Bill Vernon)
June Bruskewitz
Steve Burk
Deepak Dandekar
Quynh Dao Do
Hong An Doan
Olga Fisher
David Gibbs (Online Consulting Engineers)
Nhien Ho
Thu Ho
Warren Jones
Tuyet Le
Loan Mai
Franco Marinaro
Thu Minh Nguyen
Bill Prindle
Linh Tran
Thanh & Loan Tran
Bill Valentine
Sandy Zirulnik (Online Consulting Engineers)
“A picture is worth a thousand words”
Our first family to receive the grant to rebuild the hut is a single mother (Mai Phan) with one child (Mai-Hoa Thi Phan). Mai has constant migraine headaches which has caused deafness in one ear and is gradually developing hearing loss on her good ear. With the medical condition like that, Mai is unable hold a constant job. Her job is selling lottery tickets around town. Their hut completely collapsed earlier in the year. Not having money to rebuild, Mai and her daughter went to live with her mother who also houses Mai’s brother’s family.
Mai & her daughter Mai-Hoa are standing in the middle of where their hut used to be.
Mai-Hoa & mother standing by their almost completed home.
Mai is the happy new owner of this beautiful home.
Mai lives very far from the main road. Mopeds could only take us to a point; we walked the rest of the way on 2-ft wide mud embankments. The hut was built during the rainy season so the building material were transported by little row boats via this canal.
Our second family to receive a grant to rebuild is Ngoc-Mai Thi Nguyen. Ngoc-Mai is in the 2nd grade. In order to support their family Ngoc-Mai’s parents had to leave town to find work in another province. They come home once a year to visit. Ngoc-Mai and her little brother are currently under the care of their grandmother. Ngoc-Mai’s hut collapsed earlier in the year. Her grandmother’s hut was not in much better shape. We decided to rebuild her grandmother’s hut so that the grandmother and children have a safe place to live.
Ngoc-Mai’s hut collapsed earlier in the year.
Interior views of Ngoc-Mai’s grandmother’s hut.
Ngoc-Mai standing in front of her future home with her grandma & brother.
Ngoc-Mai’s new home
Exterior side view
