Public Relations | Press Release

‘Builders of Hope” team makes sixth annual trip to help Mexican families build homes;
visits to clinic, orphanage expose social problems just over U.S. border

C.W. Post graduate student Julieann Lovejoy with the future homeowner. The homeowner is holding a bottle that contains the names of the people who donated funds to build the house.

Twenty students and staff from the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University in Brookville, N.Y., along with seven members of a Malankara Catholic Church in Hempstead, N.Y., spent the first week of the summer break toiling in the sun alongside Mexican families building their first homes.

Lugging bricks and concrete beams, the Builders of Hope from the Newman Parish of C.W. Post lent their time and energy to Tijuana families, building homes as part of the Esperanza International program. Esperanza loans the purchase price of the homes to needy families, who repay the loan over 80 months (the repayment rate is 97 percent) and who build the modest dwellings themselves.

The Builders of Hope delegation also donated $4,800 to the Esperanza micro-loan program during their sixth annual mission, which took place from May 28 through June 3, 2006.

The team witnessed both signs of progress and indications of the chronic poverty entrenched in Tijuana, just across the U.S.-Mexican border from San Diego. The group visited a new health clinic run by Esperanza. Immediately behind the clinic was a landfill where local residents pushed away the thin layer of soil and used the heat of the rotting trash for cooking.

“Of course, the toxins in the trash were getting in their food,” said the Rev. Ted Brown, parish priest of the Newman Parish at C.W. Post and a member of the Esperanza Board of Directors.

As in years past, the group visited a local orphanage, an experience that moved one student to tears – because, she said, “I’m just happy that someone’s taking care of them,” Brown recalled.

Students who took part in the project said it gave them a new appreciation for the things many young Americans take for granted.

“The work is hard, the sun is hot, the cuts and scrapes are deep, my pockets empty, but in the end you get more than give,” said student Akbar Rizvi. “It teaches you life’s lessons, and truly keeps you humble and makes your realize how much you really have.”

“This experience is something that I will take with me for the rest of my life because I feel that the people of Mexico helped me more than I helped them,” said student Michael Lawson.

The 2006 Builders of Hope included seven parishioners of St. John Chrysostom Malankara Catholic Church in Hempstead, N.Y., including Julia Josephs, who graduated from C.W. Post in May 2006 with a Master of Science in Social Studies Education.