What Building houses for three poor families under the Global Village house building project
Where Ramesh Nagar, a tiny village about 30km from Bengaluru, India
Who National Advertising Benevolent Society in association with Habitat for Humanity
Many years ago I read a book called There's no place Like Home by Gordon MacDonald who explored the idea of how the four walls of a home are the backdrop for the very important act of "building people".
The thoughts, actions, likes, dislikes, aspirations, ideals and ideas of every member of the household, said MacDonald, are quite like bricks - the basic raw material of a house. They are all held together and bonded by the cement of love to create a structure called home, he said. In the book, he described how he and his wife Gail ‘built' their two children - and each other - in the house that they lived in on Grant Street, Massachusetts.
I found the concept fascinating - the fact that one could ‘build' people so all members of the family could enjoy a healthy, loving relationship with each other. In fact, his idea of ‘building people in a home' came in handy particularly when I became a parent and learnt parenting skills on the job.
Getting started
Then, a couple of months ago, I experienced a sense of deja vu, so to speak. I was assigned to do a feature on a group of people from diverse communities and nationalities who volunteered to build homes for less privileged families in Bengaluru, Southern India.
It was a project which in many ways was groundbreaking and which gave a new definition to the term ‘building a house'. It also reminded me of the power of teamwork - of what can be achieved if people pooled together their resources and efforts for a common good.
Between November 21 and 26, 2010, 18 members from the National Advertising Benevolent Society (NABS) from London, (including four members from Rufus Leonard, a Dubai-based and London headquartered brand and digital consultancy firm), worked on a Global Village house building project along with Habitat for Humanity (HFH) to build three houses in Bengaluru.
The NABS team which raised £25,000, was joined by Nicholas Denny, a banker from the UK and Ian Brown, team leader from Habitat for Humanity (HFH), Great Britain.
NABS (www.nabs.org.uk) provides emotional, financial or practical support and professional advice to those involved in the creation or delivery of advertising in the UK.
HFH has built or renovated more than 350,000 homes in 90 countries around the world, providing more than 1.75 million people with safe, decent, affordable shelter. Habitat runs a Save and Build housing microfinance concept in India.
Every member of the team pitched in to build houses together with the three partner families (the families that owned land but did not have resources to build houses) and a spirit of oneness was almost palpable throughout the house building community. By the end of the project, the volunteers were beaming with a sense of fulfilment that they'd made a difference in the lives of a few people, while the recipients were grateful that they now had a roof over their heads.
Day 1
The venue is Ramesh Nagar, a tiny village off Kanakapura Road, about 30km from Bengaluru.
The volunteers' mission: to build three houses.
Early on the first day a crowd of curious onlookers gather at the site. After all it is not often that a multinational team arrives in a village to build houses for the poor. After a brief welcome ceremony in a makeshift tent which later doubles as dining hall, Joseph Mathai, director, HFH (South Zone, India), C. Narsimha Murthy, director, Abhivruddi, NGO partners of HFH in this project and local government officials speak about the mission.
The welcome ceremony over, the masons brief volunteers on the basics of house building (not an easy task because of language barriers), after which the volunteers form teams to work on the three sites all of which lie within a radius of about half a kilometre. It becomes immediately clear that communication is going to be a major hurdle. The volunteers and Ravi S, the mason try every trick in the book - from sign language to sketching plans on the sand to pantomime - to exchange viewpoints and ideas. But once the basics are made clear, work begins.
Because the foundation for two houses is already complete (the owners, however, did not have the funds to proceed with the construction of the houses), six volunteers under the guidance of team leader Ian Brown soon get busy with shovels, pickaxes and crowbars clearing the land to lay the foundation for the third house.
It is hard work and pretty soon the volunteers are drenched in sweat. Quite a few of them are massaging their calloused hands and by the end of the day are relieved to rest their sore muscles.
Day 2
The day starts off on a wrong note. Apparently there is a dispute over the ownership of the land that the team had cleared in order to dig a foundation the previous day, so it is abandoned. Now the team has to start all over again on a fresh piece of land.
However, on the flipside, "communication is getting better'', according to Georgi Peyok, events coordinator of NABS.
"Some team members were invited into the homes of the villagers and we felt especially honoured by this warm gesture,'' says Peyok.
"We began interacting using sign language and they allowed the kids to play with us. We felt accepted and that was a huge reward."
Sarahjayne Matthew, from Rufus Leonard, has to push her way into the site "or the mason won't let you do a thing". But she's been busy all day sifting sand for the concrete mix and then carrying the mixture in pans to the mason who uses it to layer the bricks.
It's the first time for Neil Svensen, 48, CEO and Founder, Rufus Leonard to volunteer to build houses but not the first time he is raising funds for charity. A few years ago he ran 965km over 16 days in Peru for the Macmillan Cancer Support charity.
Svensen is happy to be building houses for the underprivileged in India because "I am finally able to give something back to humanity," he says.
"I'm looking forward to interacting with the local people, playing with their kids and I don't think language should be a barrier to getting comfortable with people," he says.
Luckily his wish is fulfilled and he's beaming as he tells me how he and the team were "welcomed very warmly by the villagers... it made us all feel really honoured. We've struck up a warm relationship with these nice people in no time at all," he says.
Day 3
For the volunteers it's the mid-point of their stay in Bengaluru and although their muscles are sore their spirits are high as they are now on high-fiving terms with the kids and on a first-name basis with the neighbours. Some like Jocelyn Yebosh-Newton, account executive, Kinectic Worldwide, have even mastered a couple of Kannada (the regional language) words and can even string together a sentence. "What's your name?" she asks a few kids in the local language, of course with a heavily anglicised accent. When someone does a good job, she says "This is wonderful" again in Kannada.
One set of volunteers begins working on an extension to an existing house for partner family Ratnamma and Narsimhamurthy. The family had been waiting for the hollow blocks required to build the walls. Now that they have been delivered, work is on. Narsimhamurthy is only happy to assist the mason and the Global Village team of volunteers.
Day 4
By the fourth day, the volunteers have picked up quite a few building skills. One team is building a wall on Site 1 and are fixing the windows and door frames. This house belongs to Soubhagya and Sampath Kumar, the latter is an auto rickshaw driver. The couple are looking forward to living here with their son Manoj, 10, and daughter Tejaswini, 8. The government allotted them a 450 square feet plot of land on which they have already built the foundation at a cost of Rs80,000. But with their funds drying up, they had to put their building plans on hold. It was then that Abhivruddi offered to connect them to HFH for an interest-free loan which they took advantage of.
Sampath joins the team to raise the walls of his house and to fix the door and window frames. Now only the concrete roofing needs to be done.
By the end of five days, thanks to the labour the volunteers donated (which would amount to about 30 per cent of the cost of building), the family will have a two-bedroom house with a kitchen, bathroom, living room and a prayer room.
"We've been paying Rs2,000 rent for our small house in the next village. Thanks to the efforts of the team, we will save on the rent and also live comfortably in a bigger house with a roof that doesn't leak. I'm grateful that this team of volunteers has come to our rescue. How would a poor person like me have ever fulfilled his dream of building a house otherwise?"
With school fees and living expenses will he be able to repay the loan he has taken? "I have an obligation to do so, because only when I repay my loan will Habitat be able to offer a loan to some other needy person like me," says Sampath.
Meanwhile, the new site allotted in place of the abandoned one is now seeing activity as a team is busy with the foundation. Nicholas Denny, or Nick as he is called, is one of those who opts for the toughest tasks and he is busy sweating it out in the trenches. "The harder I work, the happier I feel," he says.
An investment banker, Nick flew in from Moscow, where he tells me the temperature was -20˚C. Here, it is 24˚C.
He's on his sixth build in India with Habitat and "will come back next year with my own team'', he says.
Nick is convinced that Habitat is helping individuals make a real impact on issues like poverty and shelter because every penny is used well.
"In order to make a difference to the major issues of hunger and poverty and shelter we need to take a hard-headed approach. It is not just a matter of assuaging your conscience. Here you are teaching people to help themselves.
"To me it is irrelevant whether the house I am helping to build is completed during the week that I am there. It just makes me happy that I have worked hard to make that happen to whatever extent.
"I also treat this as a vacation because a vacation is doing something different, a complete change from my work at the Moscow bank office."
Jocelyn, who is originally from Ghana but born and brought up in the UK, is the life of the volunteer party. In the middle of all the construction work, one of the villagers switches on the radio which blares a Kannada film song. Right on cue Jocelyn decides to boogie in full view of an amused audience.
So what brings her to Bengaluru on this house building volunteer trip? "I wanted to make 2010 a year of different experiences. I come from a comfortable family background and so I wanted to experience what it was like to not have so many things I take for granted such as financial and emotional security. Plus, I wanted to do something in a short space of time that made a difference to someone's life.
"I'm also beginning to understand that life is about connecting to fellow human beings. These villagers already seem to have that in their life, so this lesson is more for me."
Day 5
This day has an urgency about it. Walls, window and door frames have come up nicely in two houses while the trenches around the foundation for the new site are about 0.91m deep.
"Site 1 (Soubhagya and Sampath's house) is now almost complete and site 2 with windows, doors and all their walls again looking almost there," observes Peyok happily.
Day 6
The latter half of day six is reserved for a short sight-seeing trip around Bengaluru but Svensen hopes he can work at the site instead.
Around 3:30pm, the Global Village volunteers decide to call it a day, a highly productive one because they have achieved a great deal in a short time - two houses are almost done while the foundation for the third is over. They put away their tools and gather for the farewell ceremony at the same tent where the welcome ceremony was held.
"This is always an emotional moment and it's obvious that this team of Global Village volunteers has bonded with the partner families and the villagers. The families have got some token gifts for the team," says Stalin Raj, project coordinator with HFH Bangalore who ensured the team had a seamless experience in terms of both logistics and comfort levels on site and off.
"Habitat does not believe in cheque-book philanthropy which is possibly the easiest thing to do for a lot of us,'' says Joseph Mathai, director, Habitat. "We want volunteers to contribute their time, talent and treasury. Because it's not only about building houses; it's about human bonding," he says.
More details on www.habitat.org.
What they gained
When members of National Advertising Benevolent Society (NABS) from London, which included four members of Rufus Leonard, a Dubai-based company that has its headquarters in London went to build houses in a village near Bengaluru, little did they realise that they would gain something from the experience as well. Here are some quotes from the volunteers.
"I feel I have really connected with the children and families in the village and feel honoured they have allowed me to help with their home building. One of my highlights has been being called ‘aunty" by the children."
- Katrina Mayhew Taibe, DKLW Lowe
"The main reason I came here was to help people and I feel that I have come and done that. I love the bond that we have formed with the villagers, laughing and working together and gaining their trust. I have loved it and will definitely do it again."
- Jo Goddard, Arena Media
"It's surpassed all expectations and building houses felt incredibly important. Initially there was fear, nervousness that I was not skilled enough to do this but none of that matters. It's actually teamwork and co-operation to get the job done."
- Amy Robinson, MEC
"What goes around, comes around. Building a house is all about security and a better future. We have the luck of living in the UK and therefore take it for granted. Here on this site they never expect it so we are privileged to give them a chance."
- Shuna Keating, Daily Mail
"I wanted to come here to do something more rewarding than my job at home. I've never done anything that has given me so much satisfaction. The villagers have welcomed us into their world and helped us find the real heart of India. It's an experience which will live with me forever."
- Sam McCormick, Arena Media
"I loved every minute of it and don't want to go home. Just helping only for a week seems to have made a huge difference to ‘our' families (the family that the house was built for). I've learnt a lot and really want to come back and help here."
- Jaclyn Townshend, Rufus Leonard
"What a fantastic experience, it's amazing how a smile can be so infectious and help to break down barriers. I know we have made a huge difference here and it has helped to break down taboos in Bengaluru. I would like to have stayed for longer to complete the house."
- Emily-Faye Duncan, Rufus Leonard
- Sandhya Rajayer is a freelancer based in Bengaluru, India.
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