Information for Brigadistas

From: Helen Shears
To: homemakers@homemakers.org
Subject: Building Brigade
Date: Mon, 7 Dec 1998 23:26:15

Dear Kate/Jill, Margarita and Roz, all concerned,

I am writing to inform you of progress this end specifically to do with the proposed building brigade(s). As you all have questions, and together with the development of our ideas on how best to organise this work we have come up with the following points and answers; we still have to polish up many aspects and are open to ideas/ previous experiences in housing and selfbuild projects:

Firstly you need to know that the project will be run by Asociacion Colectivo de Mujeres Constructoras de Condega in conjunction with Red de Mujeres Condega. The Constructoras will be responsible for hosting and organising the brigade(s).

- We will be building 30 houses, our priorities being:

1. Women who are beneficiaries of the Mujeres Constructoras and the Red de Mujeres Condega who have lost houses and land because of the hurricane.
2. We will be identifying single women with children who have been affected, especially those already involved/interested in collective and organised work with other women.
3. We will be identifying other women in need of housing support and who are motivated and interested in being involved in a selfbuild project.

At least one women from every family will be participating in the building of the houses and 4 - 6 women with previous basic skills experience in construction and/or carpentry. This totals nearly 36 women. If we need more labour we will be contracting women. The workgroups will have someone delegated to take responsability for all the organisation of their groups and controls as there will be 3 categories of workers: Volunteers, beneficiaries and paid labourers.

Yes we are prepared to cover food and accomodation costs for volunteers. In Condega as I have mentioned before at the Constructoras workshop there is a dormitory for 16 women. If women are working outside Condega and it is not possible to travel daily to the site we will coordinate with families and their communities to garantee accomodation.

We still do not know where the houses will be built and they will be dispersed as we have urban and rural beneficiaries. They will be together in small blocks. We have yet to finally clarify coordination between other organisations running housing projects and the council who will be providing and are still negotiating land. Also we don't know if we will be building all the houses at the same time, but we imagine that it will take a good 6 months, from mid February 1999. Obviously most volunteers won't be able to come for that long so if there was enough interest there would have to be a way of overlapping or coordinating the periods of time that women can come for.

We managed to speak to the forewoman, Rosa, who we have worked with before but unfortunately (for us and she would have liked to be involved) she has a teaching contract with the state technical college (INATEC) so is not available until May/June.

There is a need for people to be well organised at the European/US end to which obviously means we have to have good comunication and an understanding of what work is involved... For example we have some proposals:

• We need the women with the most experience and one main organiser (maybe Kate!) to come here ahead of the first stage of building to be able to be directly involved in the preparatory stages, see the sites etc. We can fax copies of the designs of the houses - there is an urban model (51 m2) and a rural one (70 m2).
• This organising commitee needs to recognise the importance of recruiting women with experience and/for forewomen and that if there are enough women to coordinate themselves to cover the 6 months that these women with more experience are distributed evenly through the period to guarantee continuity. There needs to be an organised group of people back at base to be communicating with and recruiting volunteers and fundraising for organisational expenses incurred. Maybe that is where you need backup from WAMT, NSC, CIT...already established organisations if it's proving too much "alone".

The last point is to answer your question Roz, we are a women's project and prioritise women only activities but sometimes it is appropiate and necessary to make exceptions. I have been mentioning the volunteers as women but we would obviously be happy for men volunteer if they are interested and are sensitive to women's issues in general and obviously specifically in manual trades. There are men who would obviously be interested, have a lot to offer and would get a lot out of it. I think that you will be able to evaluate that that end. We would appreciate a women only time and there will be women who will opt for a women only brigade. It depends in the end how many people and groups we are taliking about.

One last point; once the actual building process is up and running smoothly, we, some of Mujeres Constructoras will be concentrating on preparing all the carpentry work and training necessary for the final stages of the houses: roofs, doors and windows. We are starting training from January for local women so as to have a bigger team of carpenters concentrating on production. We will have to put furniture production on hold until later on into the year.

Roz to answer your question on the cost of a roof, for example: Tin, timber and nails comes to nearly US$ 450, just for the materials, not including labour, transport, etc.

House for Nicaragua: The campaign to cancel debts isn't going to affect poor people directly or immediately but at the same time it is a way of bringing issues to the forefront and is a campaign that has been building up to 2000 for a while now...so it boils down to choice of where you wnat to concentrate actively.

I think that's about all for now, I hope that's cleared up some foggy areas. We hope for feed back of any kind. It's hard to imagine what scale we are talking about but that will become clear in time, and time is going past quickly, it's almost Christmas and then it's 99...

Hasta la proxima...

Saludos abrazos
Helen

Last updated: Wednesday, 12-Jan-2000 21:29:42 EST
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