Christmas campaign

Wanted: Warm and safe habitat for Dario

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Would you have guessed? Even in Andahuaylas, temperatures sometimes drop well below zero in the winter. When it also rains, it feels a lot colder. There are many families who live in this cold under undignified and life-threatening circumstances. They live in a one-room plastic shelter. The used material is neither air- nor waterproof, not to mention heat insulation. The soil is sandy and unstable. During the rainy season, there is a danger that the whole slope will slide down, burying the entire "house" and the families under it. There is no running water or electricity. The water for cooking, daily hygiene and washing clothes, the families have to bring from a contaminated sewer well above the house.

Dario and his family live in such a dwelling. Their fate is very touching. Dario's father suffers from severe arthrosis, arthritis and gout. His hands are bent and all his joints hurt. The years of work in the mine and the poison used there, as well as the almost unbearable cold, have broken him. Dario's mother is also in pain all over her body. Like her husband, she worked under the worst conditions in the mine's poisonous water holes. Now she is the only one who has regular work and feeds the family as a washerwoman. Dario's older sister lives in the same shelter with her two small children.

Dario himself is severely developmentally delayed due to lack of oxygen at birth and has a pronounced learning disability. Even the smallest challenges during therapies in the protected casayohana space make him despair due to his strong fear of failure.

Christmas is coming: thinking about the story, we are touched that the shepherds were the first at the manger. Simple people from the outskirts of the city, without a roof over their heads, somewhere in the open field. Perhaps it was also as cold and desolate as Dario's. And God meets them in their situation: "Do not be afraid! I bring you good news for all people! The Savior, yes Christ the Lord - has been born tonight" (Luke 2:10-11).
It impresses us and makes us glad that God seeks first those who are in abject poverty, cold and loneliness. He wants to dwell with them! As a team of casayohana we want to pass on this message of hope to Dario and his family, but also to many other families in Andahuaylas who live in very similar situations. Our heart's desire is to enable these people to have a warm and safe place to live.

And for this we at casayohana need your support:.
Building a whole house, solid and stable of stone, is not possible. The bad, sandy soil on the slope would slide away. What would help the families is first to build a stable retaining wall downward to stabilize the sloping hillside. Then, in a second step, one can put an outer wall for a house, about 1.5m high, made of light building materials. On top of it, one builds a lightly insulated roof made of pressboard, foil, straw and metal sheet. Thirdly, we would like to provide the family with an inlet and outlet for clean water, so that fetching water from the contaminated sewage system can stop.

So you can help directly:

1 bag of cement for 10€
500 stones for 50€
1 m water pipe (+ installation) for 20€ 1 house door for 120€
1 sheet of corrugated iron for 7€

We appreciate any amount with the following donation code (= purpose): 21-8 (Christmas campaign and casayohana in general)

THANK YOU!