The dream of owning a home
Two hours from Mexico City, before reaching Valle de Bravo, is San Simón de la Laguna, a quiet town with a breathtakingly green countryside, a lake, and cornfields. The community mainly comprises Indigenous Mazahuas.
This is the community where Edna and her son, Edward, reside. Until recently, they lived with seven other family members in their parent’s three-room home. Without space for privacy, the two slept in the kitchen.
Edna cleans the community school and embroiders traditional fabrics with the Indigenous Mazahuas Artisans Group, which comprises 30 women from San Simón de la Laguna. Her monthly earnings, however, were not enough to fulfill her dream of building her own home with a loan.
“My son was growing up… we wanted a private space for each of us”— Edna, resident of San Simón de la Laguna, Mexico
When Habitat for Humanity Mexico told her she had been selected to build a house through a donation, Edna cried tears of joy and felt tremendous gratitude that God had answered her prayers.
“I said, ‘Thank you, God, because I didn’t expect this. But, as they say, hope is what remains. God heard our needs. This house is a blessing from God,” she recalls.
Edna’s house is the outcome of a donation from the Banorte Foundation, which funded a total of 25 improvements and/or new house constructions, all with an average size of 164 square feet and comprising two bedrooms, a bathroom, a living room and a kitchen.
To obtain the house, Edna attended a series of five trainings that Habitat Mexico provided to the group of women selected for the project, covering topics such as the right to adequate housing, healthy community coexistence, habitability, healthy housing and proper home maintenance.
“God bless each of the people who have helped me. May God multiply their labors to provide more support to those in need. Thanks be to God that we have our home, that my son and I have our own space. I always dreamed of having a home like this, with a view of the corn fields and the mountains,” she says.
Edna and her son now live happily in their new home—a safe place where she can eat breakfast each morning with the view she had dreamed of.
