DIGNIFIED HOMES
Within their first few months in our program, we collaborate with families to completely rebuild their homesteads.
A healthy home environment is a crucial step toward happiness and dignity in the community. Each family's first-hand experience in creating their own change catalyzes positive momentum in other aspects of life, too.
HOW WE SUPPORT FAMILIES TO ACHIEVE
DIGNIFIED HOMES
Collaborative homestead renovations
Family Care's first big action with families is a total homestead rebuild covering houses, kitchens, washrooms, and latrines. UKR provides materials, and families themselves do the rest.
With each of these major projects, we ask those who benefit to contribute significantly. Every family offers around 1⁄3 of total construction costs in the form of locally available materials and sweat equity.
As a result of this effort, most families are already experiencing greater dignity and self-confidence within their first few months of joining our program. Family Care leverages this to guide families as they set goals for change in other areas of life.
A decent place to sleep
Good sleep is essential to a productive life, and for many families such sleep has long been elusive. But with a secure and leak-free house, it becomes much easier to add other comforts, until a house feels more like a proper home.
UKR staff work with families to assess what they have, and what they need. Then their Family Care budget provides a few essentials for good sleep:
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Beds and mattresses, for parent(s) and for every two same-gender siblings to share
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Mosquito nets
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Blankets, so that everyone has their own
Solar light and rainwater storage
Family Care offers a solar light to all of its families, because even those few with grid power can't always pay for it.
A water tank is also offered to families who complete a concrete slab to hold it. This makes sanitation, hygiene, and daily life much easier, and it frees up time used collecting water for work, study, and rest.
Basic home furnishings
Through families' personal, flexible-use 'Family Care Budgets,' UKR provides resources to help them furnish their new homes.
Families generally draw on this budget for whatever big goals they have, and an expense on basic dignity and wellbeing is one form of investment.
Families without essential furnishings are considered for help with not just bedding, but also a simple table and seats funded through their Family Care budgets. We want to see transformational change and that includes, within each new house, somewhere to sit, study, and eat together.
The challenge
In western Kenya, 'permanent' homes made of bricks or concrete are a preserve of the middle class. Most people live in semi-permanent mud houses, which are not luxurious but can still be inviting, cozy, and comfortable. They can last for two or three generations with proper maintenance.
Families with children living in the most unacceptable conditions are more likely to be chosen for Family Care. As a result, UKR has a lot of work to support on almost every new family's homestead.
When a new family joins our program they usually live in a crumbling home, and there's always always a back story. It stands out in the neighborhood, and is not supposed to be that way. (There's a big difference between a good and a bad semi-permanent mud home.)
The backstory on these homes is often one of couples who never had the means to fulfill the basic cultural rite of building a house, like their peers. Other families we serve are led by single mothers and widows, occupying semi-abandoned structures that belonged to relatives who moved or passed away. They too never had the means to build for themselves. Family and friends might help with trees and labor, but the cost of a metal roof and nails has always been too much.
Those we support often live in home conditions that are heartbreaking to their own neighbors. These include:
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Deplorable house conditions, with children sleeping under leaking roofs, on bedbug-prone rags laid down to protect them from a cold and slimy mud floor
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Unventilated wood fires for cooking in houses, because of no funds for a traditional separate kitchen structure, exposing whole families to dangerously high levels of indoor smoke pollution
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Unhygienic and dangerous pit latrines that risk collapse or overflowing during rain - or no latrines at all, forcing families to 'use the bush'
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Outdoor bathing areas that lack privacy and expose users to the risk of chigoe fleas in feet
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Extreme lack of very basic home needs such as like light, clean water, tables or seats, beds or blankets, clothing, cookware, cutlery, etc.
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A sense of lost dignity in the village for living this way - and with it, a deep shame that can cripple mental wellbeing and block any hope or vision of progress from rising above the horizon, into sight
Common strengths that families can leverage
While challenges in living conditions are many, they aren't always so complicated. Resources are needed for things to be (re)built. Some of those resources must come from a hardware store, but a great deal of what's needed can come from the strengths of families themselves. These include:
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Families' willingness to tirelessly provide their own labor - all-hands-on-deck style - to fulfill the grand vision of living in a good home
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Locally available resources like timber from a family's own trees, gravel from breaking down stones with a hammer, or sand collected from roadside drainage channels
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Relatives and neighbors who want to lend a helping hand, or who can provide missing materials
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A team of locals who can frame a house and install its roof in only two days, leaving the rest of the work to a family and those willing help them
Our holistic approach to this complex problem
Our goal is for every family to live in a respectable home that is secure, leak-free during rain, with access to a hygienic pit latrine, and free of dangerous smoke from cooking fires. We accomplish this through collaboration with the families who benefit.
For each new or improved house, families provide local materials like timber, clay mud, and labor. Meanwhile, UKR pays for metal roof sheets, nails, and am affordable local team who frame and roof a house. It works similarly with kitchens structure, where materials recycled from the old home are often used. And nearly the same way with latrines and washrooms, where UKR provides roofing sheets plus cement and rebar for a floor slab, while families do much of the rest like digging a deep pit and build walls.
We also seek to ensure all families have light at night, a comfortable place to sleep, nets to protect from malaria, water storage for home use, and clean & safe water to drink. There's plenty of giving here, but it's usually a one-off fix, and families always contribute as much as they can. With water tanks, for example, each family builds a concrete slab to hold the water tank, before receiving it.
Good home conditions positively impact all family members by helping prevent illnesses. Safety and comfort at home are also essential for mental health, and facilitate people’s ability to focus on bigger dreams like education or business.
Under Dignified Homes, the Family Care program contributes a lot, but families do a lot as well. Together, we build dignity and hope.
Our new home has given us peace of mind, comfort, and a fresh start. I’ve even found myself dancing! Every morning when I wake up and look around, I feel like I’m still dreaming.
Pennina, UKR mother
