Those are the words written on the wall of the bedroom shared by a mother, a father and their two children in their small mountainside home in Nuevo Cuscatlán, El Salvador.
Each day, the family’s disabled 16-year-old daughter has to be pushed up eight flights of stairs in her wheelchair and raised and lowered by her mother into a chest-high cement basin for her daily bath because their house has limited running water.
Despite the struggles of their current living arrangements, the family is grateful for their blessings, as evidenced by the literal writing on the wall.
Fortunately, for this family and others in Nuevo Cuscatlán, those living arrangements are changing. With a donation from Jacksonville’s Providence Homes to New Story, 131 families are in the process of moving into their new, safe homes. New Story is a social housing nonprofit that pioneers solutions to end global homelessness. The organization builds homes in Haiti, El Salvador, Mexico and Bolivia.
The team from Providence Homes recently traveled to El Salvador to see the community they funded and the consensus from the group is it was a life-changing trip.
“We were able to give a family the keys to their new homes on move-in day,” said Peyton Davidson, Providence Homes marketing manager. “Seeing the joy and pride in their faces is something I will never forget as long as I live.”
According to Davidson, the families have input into how the home is laid out to best suit the needs of their family and get to pick the interior paint colors. The family whose old home the group visited will be equipped with an accessible first-floor bedroom and bathroom for their daughter.
After visiting El Salvador and seeing firsthand the work New Story was doing, Providence Homes founder and CEO Bill Cellar wanted to partner with New Story in celebration of the homebuilder’s 30th anniversary.
“For the past three decades, we have worked with clients in the Jacksonville area to make their homeownership dreams come true,” said Cellar. “We have been very fortunate to grow our business and it is truly a blessing to partner with New Story to provide the gift of homeownership to the wonderful, hard-working people of Nuevo Cuscatlán.”