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Show MONDAY, AUGUST 30,2010 THE SIGNPOST Guatemala continued from front Habitat continued from front Lindsey Powell, WSU Volunteer Involvement Pro'-gram chair for Habitat for j ; Humanity. t- The team is comprised 2; entirely of volunteers, and J; almost all materials and t.«iand are obtained through *;;donations. \y':. Volunteers and friends !;pf the Guerreros gath[' ered for the groundbreaki n g ceremony on Friday I-night. Smiles were spread *; across everyone's faces, ;*ahd despite the rain that I;descended, the ceremony ;: commenced. The group of ; : about 40 people scrambled £.; together for shelter inside jj^a Mobile Mini, but most •jfwere already drenched - from the downpour. •: r "A lot of people believe Xthat our program is just a ^giveaway, when in reality .'^the families have to put in hundreds of hours of'sweat equity/" said Lynn Kelley, .'^member of the Board of •^Directors for Habitat for .' Humanity for the last eight years. Sweat equity, a certain aspect of Habitat, requires families to take financial : classes and also to work on either their home or other Habitat homes. A couple works 500 hours of sweat -, equity, and a single family :; puts in 300 hours. I Partner families also ;•• make monthly payments :; on their Habitat home £ f in addition. With Habitat homes selling .with no profit and no interest, it is possible to gather the family's expected house expenses and set a monthly mortgage payment of up Each person who comes gets a free t-shirt and they can enter to win a 150 cc street legal scooter. to, but usually less than, bers, four of which serve 30 percent of the family's on the executive committee, in addition to several gross monthly income. "We make it so the fam- active and previous presiily can support themselves dents and countless volunand make payments for teers. "This is an unpaid partabout 15-25 years," said Tom Hart, president of time job th%t we all are very Habitat for Humanity of passionate about," Hart Weber and Davis counties. said. The ceremony ended "We don't set them up to fail. Every family that we with closing remarks from have helped is still in the Hart, thanking everyone home and keeping up on involved. Participants then ventured back into the rain payments." Kelley emphasized that for the groundbreaking, Habitat is a leg-up, not a where members took goldpainted shovels and dug handout. "They've put their own into the soil of this soonblood, sweat and tears to-be construction site. "Our payday is when the into their home, and when you've put that much work family moves in," Starkey into something, you tend said, "having their welto appreciate it more and coming and giving them want to take better care of the key to their new home." According to Powell, it in the future," Kelley said. Two checks were pre- there are other benefits to sented to Habitat for Hu- volunteering with Habitat manity at the ceremony for Humanity. "It's fun working with — one donated from Powell said. Leadership Northern Utah Habitat," Academy for $1,700, which "They have lots of events they raised by selling Jazz for students; for example, tickets, and the other from every year they provide Hill Air Force Base for an Alternate Spring Break $2,022, which was raised at where you can go on a trip to another state and vola golf tournament. "I love knowing that unteer. It's fun to go with we're helping people," said Weber students, and it gets Paul Starkey, vice president you more involved with the of Habitat for Humanity of university." Weber and Davis counties. Hart said that WSU stu"People come from poor dents have in turn benefitconditions, where a whole ed Habitat for Humanity as family is in a single apart- well. ment, and they have to "We're very proud of our spend all their money on partnership with WSU," rent with none left over for Hart said. "We've worked food or education." with fantastic people." Habitat for Humanity Comment on this story at is made possible through wsusignpost.com. roughly 15 board mem- Due to lack of transportation, WSU students ride in the back of a truck to get to a Mayan ceremonial site and observe the fusion between Mayan and Catholic culture and religion. local people in digging out one of their homes. WSU student Jason Hermann described his own experience in helping a woman and her child dig through the mud to find their personal belongings. "We found one of her child's shoes," Hermann said. "A little while later we found the other one. I handed it to her and she was crying. I mean, they were flip-flops. They are worth a dollar or less here. It made a real impact with me how big some of those things are to them and how to start businesses. The projects focused primarily on providing services to women in San Pedro because men are known to spend money that they earn on objects and services that do not last very long, while the women have a better track record of putting the money into long-term investments. One of the main rules for those who took the trip was that they were only allowed to speak Spanish the entire time. This was a difficult requirement a small quantity /f truly made not only for some of the of money can . . students, but actually help them happy also for many them." _ when their of the women The main b e i n g children were focus of the trip assisted was providing happy." on the microfinancing trip. Many s e r v i c e s of these — Zakary Stapp to Mayan women are women in the WSU student indigenous community Mayans who of San Pedro. primarily Microfinancing speak the Mayan language is the provision of financial and actually assistance to low-income Tz'utujil have difficulty speaking people who often lack Spanish, despite it being access to banks. country's official A quarter of the the Guatemalan population language. Many of the local women lives on only $2 a day. Adult literacy has reached make fajas to earn a living. only about 75 percent, and Fajas are long woven belts Guatemala is 156th out of used by Mayan women in 181 countries ranked for dress. They often require the ability of their people nearly two days of labor to see make them, and cost about $4 to make, which is about half their selling price. Unfortunately, tourists do not typically buy fajas from the women, as they have no use for them at home. WSU students Zakary and Emily Stapp helped teach some of the women how to make shorter headbands and belts out of the fajas so that they would sell better to American tourists. The belts and headbands required less material to make and only two hours to weave them rather than two days, and all of the belts and headbands made were sold within the first day. "One woman, Maria, told us that that night she had stayed up 24 hours to make them because they were selling," Emily Stapp said. "And she knew that she .was going to make money for the first time in a long time." Zakary Stapp talked about the difference this trip made for the women's children, and how the women were most excited about the idea that their children would have a better life than themselves. "I could see the sparkle in their eyes," he said. "It truly made them happy when their children were happy." Comment on this story at wsusignpost.com. SOURCE: COLESP1CKER WSU students and professor Alicia Giralt interact with local Mayan women and explain microfinancing principles in San Pedro, Guatemala. THE LOWEST PRICE AROUND 3585 Harrison Blvd. # 218 Ogden, UT 844P3 |