We all know that housing is a basic human necessity.\u00a0 To have a place that provides safety and protection from the elements is critical to becoming sustainably self-reliant.\u00a0 Ensuring children have a safe place to live is a top priority for each ZOE program. Because of the way the ZOE model adapts, different countries provide solutions to children in different but equally successful ways.<\/p>\n
In northeastern Rwanda where ZOE works, many children are homeless or do not have safe places to stay. To address this, children in ZOE Rwanda learn home-building and agricultural skills early on. Having a safe place to store the food or livestock they raise and sell is crucial to their success. Groups work together to build one another safe homes they can both live and do business.<\/p>\n
As part of their community development efforts, the Rwandan government will give land for families to live on.\u00a0 ZOE helps children apply for land grants, then groups work together to create bricks for a local builder to use in construction. When the home is ready, ZOE provides a metal roof, door and windows.<\/p>\n
In Kenya, children often have land and housing, but it is often inadequate or has fallen into disrepair.\u00a0 Instead of directly addressing housing, ZOE Kenya provides greater investment into businesses that earn income quickly. After a few months, most children have enough extra income to improve their homes or build new ones. However, in cases where children are homeless or in unsafe situations, a group can choose to build a home for a child-led family using a ZOE fund. Together, the group purchases the materials and hires a builder to help them build the house.\u00a0 Similar to Rwanda, ZOE provides the roof, doors and windows.<\/p>\n
When homes are built, ZOE employs a strategy for ownership that ensures empowerment for the whole family. In Kenya, the policy is to give the home to the youngest child in the family. That way, if an older child decides to marry or move away, the younger siblings can remain in the home.\u00a0 In Rwanda, if all the ZOE children choose to move out of their home, the house reverts back to ZOE to be given to another child-led family.<\/p>\n
The homes built by ZOE\u2019s empowerment groups are built to look like other homes in the community.\u00a0 This helps children better integrate into their community, and move past the label of \u201cpoor orphan.\u201d<\/p>\n
Central to ZOE\u2019s home-building process is that every group decides which of them needs a home and works together every step of the way.\u00a0 Building a home together builds the group\u2019s cohesiveness and sense of community.\u00a0 The children\u2019s pride at each home dedication ceremony is awe-inspiring.\u00a0 It is empowerment.<\/b><\/p>\n
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We all know that housing is a basic human necessity.\u00a0 To have a place that provides safety and protection from the elements is critical to becoming sustainably self-reliant.\u00a0 Ensuring children have a safe place to live is a top priority for each ZOE program. Because of the way the ZOE model adapts, different countries provide […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":10609,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[23],"country":[24,26],"yst_prominent_words":[142,262,278,144,2170,204,256,2028,293,126],"class_list":["post-10608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-zoe-impact","tag-housing","country-kenya","country-rwanda"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10608"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10608\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10608"},{"taxonomy":"country","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/country?post=10608"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=10608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}