This post comes from WFPL intern Cassidy Herrington, a Heine Brother’s Coffee barista who recently traveled to Guatamala with the company to work with Habitat for Humanity.
A group of 16 Heine Brothers’ Coffee baristas and patrons traveled to Guatemala this month to construct homes with Habitat for Humanity.
Sarah Crawford, a Heine Brothers’ employee, served as the leader for the team and previously traveled to Guatemala on five other occasions for Habitat projects.
Habitat for Humanity is a nonprofit organization that builds affordable housing for low-income families. Habitat began its work in Guatemala in 1979 as a part of its Global Village program and has built nearly 30,000 homes. More than 75% of Guatemalans live below the poverty line, and the concentration lies among the rural and indigenous peoples.
“Fifty percent of Guatemala’s population lives in substandard housing,” Crawford said. “Some housing situations involve mud-bricks, dirt floors or families of fifteen crowded into one room.”
The Heine Brother’s team worked on three houses in Santa Cruz del Quiche, a highland Guatemalan town heavily afflicted by poverty. The worksite is a few minutes on the outskirts of town, where Habitat owns a plot of land to be a “colony” of houses. The four-room homes consist of cinderblocks and a tin roof, and are designed to withstand Guatemala’s vulnerability to earthquakes.
Habitat for Humanity prides itself for being a “hand-up” as opposed to a “hand-out,” meaning that recipients of a house must be able to pay $4,000 for the homes. They are given 10 to 15 year mortgages ranging from 30 to 60 dollars a month.
“It is the backbone and philosophy of Habitat,” Crawford said. “They want to empower and instill a sense of self worth.”
Guatemala is among the top ten coffee producing countries in the world and, consequentially, the Heine Brothers’ team visited a coffee farm to witness the cultivation and working conditions for coffee farmers in the region.
The volunteers returned to their respective coffee shops on July 17, after two weeks of rigorous labor and travel.The cement-crusted boots and calloused hands may not be permanent, but Crawford anticipates that the memories will linger.
“Hopefully this is something that they [the volunteers] will take away for the rest of their life, and ultimately affect their decisions in the future,” Crawford said.
