The ROOF Project: Not just a fad

After spending a year as a volunteer with the Roof Project (TECHO) I realized I had a lot to say about this organization and its work. How did they get such a large group of youth volunteers? What commitment do they have with the organization and with the families they work with? Is working with this project just a fad? Keeping these questions in mind, I looked more closely at my experience.

Harold Bellanger

There’s a lot of talk in Nicaragua about the demographic dividend. Knowledgeable pro- fessionals explain that “we’re reducing the birth rate and increasing the youth population able to work” and insist that we must “take advantage of this.”

Are Youth apathetic?

We 1.8 million youth represent 30% of Nicaragua’s total population. Faced with this relatively new reality many consider this a vitally important stage in ensuring Nicaragua’s development. The demographic dividend means an important segment of the population with energy to actively support economic, social, political and cultural development in various tasks—a generation of young workers able to produce and thus maintain an older population that’s also growing.

What’s to be done if the main participants—the youth—don’t share the euphoria of this supposed grace period? According to the 2011 study by the Center for Information and Communication (CINCO), “Young People and Political Culture in Nicaragua—Generation 2000,” less than 30% of today’s youth say they’re “happy.” If this is true, more than a million youth are dissatisfied with their own or the nation’s situation. What’s striking is that this disagreement or dissatisfaction isn’t moving them to fight to change things. The study showed them a list of eleven activities and asked which ones they did during their free time. Political and social work activities weren’t among them.

What causes these symptoms of youth apathy? Do Nicaraguan youths perhaps lack spaces to express their disagreements and to propose and work on alternatives for change? Or are they simply not focusing their energies on any “cause”?

After spending a year as a volunteer with TECHO (the Roof Project), I felt therewas a lot to say about this organization and its work. TECHO already has enough “stage presence” in Nicaragua but more interesting than what’s directly visible is to analyze what’s not so visible and what it can tell us about the youth who participate in this initiative. How did TECHO get such a large group of youth volunteers? What type of commitment do they have with the organization and the families they work with? Is TECHO only a passing fad? With these questions in mind, I spoke with several directors and permanent volunteers and attended several workshops.

TECHO was born in Chile

The Jesuit priest Felipe Berríos founded the nonprofit organization Un Techo para Chile (A Roof for Chile) in 1997. Throughout the countries where the initiative spread it began to be called “A Roof for my Country” but now it’s known everywhere simply as TECHO.

After 16 years of work, TECHO has become truly international. It exists in 19 Latin American countries and has fundraising offices in the United States and England and an enviable network of international relationships. TECHO can boast that it offers its members opportunities for “international mobility,” something now common in universities that try to attract students by offering them the possibility of registering for a semester abroad. Today Panama, Chile, Haiti and the Dominican Republic have at least one TECHO director who’s Nicaraguan.

Although it started with the objective of providing decent housing in Chile’s settlements where the poorest population lives, TECHO began to venture into new work as the organization grew and matured over the years. Today, Techo Chile, the oldest and most experienced project, has a center that publishes studies by young people focused on subjects related to the problems of those settlements. The weekly accompaniment in the settlements themselves, called “work tables,” is the source of information for these studies.

TECHO comes to Central America

TECHO came to Central America through El Salvador in 2001, then started working in Guatemala and Nicaragua in 2008 and has been in existence in Honduras for a little over three years. The number of youth involved in each project and volunteers who participate in the building, surveys and raise funds is monitored in detail, thus providing a fairly accurate and up-to-date track of the number of youth who have been involved since TECHO’s arrival in each country. El Salvador is at the top of the list with 17,421 youth, followed by Nicaragua with 12,500, Panama with 3,681 and Honduras with 2,900.

Matías Miguens, the communications director, told me that TECHO Guatemala has succeeded in setting a record in Latin America with the fundraising by street collections and donations from businesses. In 2011 they raised $1.3 million, over four times the $300,000 Argentina raised in the same year.

Contact and interchange among the various sites is an important part of the work of improving weaknesses and learning from each other. The directors share data and exchange experiences by videoconferences or by travel when the budget permits.

TECHO debuts in Nicaragua

Nicaragua was the fourteenth Latin American country to which TECHO arrived. In the beginning only a few university students built the first five “emergency houses,” which the organization calls the houses since built in our country. They are 3 by 6 meters with a door and four windows, raised a meter and a half over heavy posts to prevent the flooding habitually suffered by families living in the settlements.

In Nicaragua TECHO started with barely 70 volunteers, all of whom were friends or at least knew each other. At that time they weren’t as organized as they are now with the average number of volunteers who participate in the massive house construction activities seldom falling below 200. Some 1,360 emergency houses built have already been as of this February.

A happy but austere office

Two details immediately caught my attention upon entering the TECHO offices in a rented house in Managua’s Los Robles section. The first was the youthful décor of the place, making it not at all office-like. Motivational posters on the blue and white painted walls catch the visitor’s attention. On one wall a piece of plastic serves as a whiteboard where each month’s activities are written. On the other wall hangs printed material with social themes for the visitor to read. There are also smaller posters with information such as the numbers of “work tables” in the communities, houses built and youth mobilized, all with drawings and colors.

I also noted how austere the office is. The furniture is all second-hand and the office only has two desk computers. Others are brought by individuals, who also bring their own cameras and even fans to deal with the heat. The organization doesn’t have its own vehicle so during collection days the volunteers who have their own cars use them and are reimbursed for fuel costs.

What staff is there? One woman directs what they call the social area and another the commercial area. These two areas coordinate different activities: Survey and Assignment, Construction, Funding Development, Administration and Finance, Social Concerns, Social Training, Legal, Communication and Training and Volunteers. These directors are the only ones who have fixed jobs and receive salaries that vary between the equivalent of $450 and $750 a month. Although it’s stipulated that some only work half time, it’s necessary to commit to eight or more hours of work a day in order to meet with the volunteers.

TECHO isn’t an organization where one can aspire to a fixed, stable job. A newly graduated university student might be able to get a director position in some area after a year or two of volunteer work.

An unconventional hierarchy

There are no divisions between work spaces in the office. Meetings might be held in the back room or in the central space. And when the office is full of people right before some large activity, the place can become chaotic, creating major distraction, with some working on materials to pass out in the next street collection, others calling the 200 volunteers one by one to confirm their participation, others taking a rest, talking or listening to music. While one is busy entering data in the computer or editing some video for the next organizational campaign, the talk of others and the new arrivals always offer an opportunity to stop for a while and hang out.

The cost of this attractive, youthful environment is the distractions that continually interfere with the work. The difficulty concentrating prolongs the time needed to finish what one is doing. I had the impression that these young people find no problem in having a lot of work as long as it doesn’t mean being alone or working in silence.

The fact that the “bosses” are other young people continues to be a plus in TECHO. The 12 directors of the various areas are an average of 23 years old. The hierarchy is in no way conventional, which at times impedes the work development. Lack of punctuality and unfinished work can’t be sanctioned because it’s being done by volunteers. I could see how difficult the struggle is for those in charge to change young people’s idea that volunteer work is a favor or donation one takes lightly rather than a commitment one has taken on.

Managing and coordinating human resources is always complicated. In TECHO it can be even more so. The young directors, most of whom are women, learn to talk with, listen to and motivate their volunteers. They feel they have to keep their spirits up and convey a positive atmosphere. Over time they’ve developed many communication strategies aimed at how best to work with young people. If in the universities there’s a continual, and often unsuccessful, struggle to get students to read, it’s the same in TECHO. Knowing this, information is passed on through talks and fun activities, always bearing in mind that the objective is to maintain young people’s attention.

From adventure to commitment

The volunteers at TECHO include university students, some already graduated, as well as people from the communities who want to contribute. It’s clear to those in the Training and Volunteers area that the initial social awareness or consciousness level of the young men and women who come to TECHO varies greatly so one must work a lot with them. I heard from those in charge that the high schoolers who participate have no idea of the magnitude of Nicaragua’s social inequalities.

According to William Pavón, a university student who’s a permanent volunteer in the area of Training and Volunteers and is in charge of communicating with and inviting high school students to participate, “What moves them is curiosity, to get out of their environment and comfort zone and look for adventure.” William recognizes that what most motivates him is seeing that moment in which this search for adventure becomes for some a commitment. “The work we do with them is ongoing,” he says, “both in the settlement communities and in their high schools. Here they learn to develop skills such as teamwork, leadership and communication. You have to be patient—change never happens overnight.”

I wanted to know if it wasn’t wearing to work year in and year out with many new young people. “Not really,” he convincingly asserts. “I always come across youth without much interest but this doesn’t discourage me because I know I’ll find volunteers. You have to give each one his or her own time and space.” Since he’s young himself, William understands what youths are like at this age and knows how much he can get from them without pressuring. Understanding them and having the conviction he’ll be able to influence them allows him to persevere in work that others might find emotionally exhausting.

In the youths’ narratives of starting to work with TECHO, they emphasize the elements of spontaneous adventure. Tito Castillo, a high school student, recalls that he hadn’t planned to participate in the first construction he attended. “I was on vacation,” he tells me, “and by chance was playing at my cousin’s house. He invited me and told me we’d stay and sleep there during the weekend. I liked the idea but didn’t know where I was going; I borrowed clothes from my cousin and went with my Ben 10 towel. In the midst of that poverty, that towel really embarrassed me. But once there, doing the building, I had a squad leader who was excellent. He really surprised me.”

Annual street fundraising day

The annual fundraising in the streets is usually the activity in which high school youth are initiated. Not everyone is old enough to participate in building or haa their parents’ permission. At 15 years of age, which is the earliest they can start, TECHO is an attractive, fun-seeming temporary activity, or even a fad. They know the annual collection is to raise money for a good cause and that by working in it they’re fulfilling their required hours of community service for school. Often the main reason for participating is to spend some extra hours with friends in the street and get a t-shirt that says they participated.

On collection day these youth fill Managua’s streets from 7 am until 5 pm, standing hours under the sun or the rain. And even though some complain of being tired, they are responsible and orderly.

In order for this collection to be successful, many hours the previous weeks have been invested in planning: drawing up lists of contacts, communicating with the high schools, selecting the areas for each group. On the day itself the heads of each group must oversee the work and the safety of so many young people in the streets. On collection days one sees a lot of proactivity, energy and willingness from the students that often isn’t so visible in the classrooms.

The future permanent volunteers will come from these first activities. There’s invariably a group that, upon finishing the task, is excited and wants to know what the next work will be or how they might help with something else. Although only a minority comes and offers to work on future tasks, the TECHO directors and the permanent volunteers are clear that whether the boys and girls return and want to continue depends on them. They also know that collecting funds, even though it’s a successful way of partially funding the construction work, isn’t TECHO’s main objective.

The real objective is to put
a roof over people’s heads

In all countries TECHO’s main objective is to improve the lives of the people in the settlements, those urban, semi-urban or rural areas in which the poorest families live in appalling conditions. TECHO characterizes the settlements as places that “shelter eight or more families in precarious living conditions, with irregular possession of land and lacking at least one of the basic services.”

We already know that Nicaragua is the second poorest country in Latin America after Haiti. But when thinking about poverty, the first thing that generally comes to mind is lack of food, health care, education and unemployment. Housing doesn’t appear frequently as a priority; it gets secondary importance.

But TECHO doesn’t see it like that. A small place like these emergency houses can assure poor people the possibility of keeping the little they own and guarantee them the tranquility to be able to think of other needs. Having a roof under which to protect oneself allows one to prioritize other things.

The importance of the “work tables”

The work tables, which in Chile were started in order to get closer to the settlement populations, are recent in Nicaragua. Anne Siebert, who’s in charge of visiting different settlements in Chile every weekend and analyze together with the communities the problems they face, came to Nicaragua to contribute to this area of work.

The work tables proceed at different speeds, with no interest in trying try to homogenize them or present any as “successful cases” that show the advantages of any particular methodology. I perceived this way of working as very different from other NGOs that develop specific tasks with an injection of guaranteed capital and already established and defined methodologies.

In the work tables TECHO promotes the idea that it’s the community itself that decides on the work and develops it. Each one identifies its priorities and organizes itself. All proposals are valid and TECHO functions only as a mediator and facilitator of information. Volunteers don’t arrive to “enlighten” the community with methodologies and arguments created by development experts. The ideas come from the communities, which also impose the pace of implementing them.

The key is volunteer work

Many of TECHO’s activities obviously aren’t original. A number of NGOs have worked in Nicaragua for many years with worthwhile initiatives. Nor can it be said that TECHO’s work requires less effort because it has a freer agenda. In many respects TECHO is like other NGOs, working to raise funds to invest in an organized manner to improve the lives of the poorest families in Nicaragua.

Considering this common denominator, the interesting thing is TECHO’s experience, which is its main difference with many NGOs: it relies on volunteer work with youth and almost no one earns a cent. Volunteers seek funding, organize, advertise and provide their labor. But in a country as poor as Nicaragua, how is TECHO able to attract so many youth without offering an economic or other incentive? How can it keep these youth committed?

Between class hours, duties and entertainment, TECHO’s volunteer youth have to set aside time for meetings and volunteer work. Beyond the two or three weekends and first three days of Holy Week in which they participate in the annual construction days, they make a commitment to regularly attend office meetings in the late afternoon and on Saturdays in which experts are invited to give presentations. Although these meetings aren’t attended with the desired regularity, many hours of being together strengthens the friendship among the volunteers.

Sabrina, the Training and Volunteers director, is aware that TECHO is judged more for the number of houses built each year than for the training efforts—the more houses, the more successful the year. She’s concerned about this idea because TECHO wants to be a source of transformation, education and consciousness-raising for youth—but those things are more difficult to measure than the number of houses built.

The directors work from Monday through Friday, then spend Saturdays and Sundays with the work tables in the settlements. Everyone knows that permanent volunteers are needed to reach TECHO’s objectives. A lot of work must be assigned to these young men and women volunteers in the two massive construction campaigns—the one in December and the one in Holy Week—just as in the smaller construction campaigns. It’s a responsibility, a challenge and even an art.

Before placing the roof

The emergency housing isn’t totally free for the family. In TECHO there’s a strong belief that anything that’s a gift isn’t appreciated or cared for. Thus, for a family from a settlement to be able to take over the construction contract and pay the two thousand córdobas (less than $100) the house will cost them, a selection process begins weeks before the construction with surveys conducted by the volunteers to measure the family’s situation quantitatively. This is followed by a more open survey that measures qualitative parameters.

Afterwards the volunteers deliberate and select the families for whom they will build the houses. The volunteers discuss economic issues with these families to be sure the family can cover the cost of the house and the ongoing costs of owning it. Before construction day begins, a couple of volunteers meet each weekend with the families assigned a house. These volunteers have learned that they’re not there to teach or train but to share and talk together about the best way to manage money.

Such collaboration with the communities has made it possible for the young people living in the settlements themselves to also take responsibility for TECHO activities in their own and other neighborhoods. It’s a way to change how those who come to build houses in the settlement are perceived. Since TECHO 2012, Jimmy, who was put in charge of accounting and maintenance of building tools, has been part of TECHO. His family received an emergency house and Jimmy decided to dedicate part of his time to volunteer work.

How the construction work is organized

After the family selection process, the construction begins. The “school leaders” already know the various families several days before the construction period. Others, such as the construction leaders, visit each home while the building is going on and are also in charge of guaranteeing all the materials and work tools and weighing the nails. It’s up to them to make sure nothing is lacking for the job. Once the building is underway, it’s also their responsibility to evaluate the quality of the youth’s work and encourage the slower building squads.

The squad leaders have three or more youths in their charge. They oversee the quality of the house for each person and coordinate the tasks of each squad member under them. The supervisor is in charge of maintaining order and cooking food for the young builders. Since the construction usually takes longer than one day, lodging is also needed. Sometimes public or private schools or community centers serve as shelters. The supervisors are in charge of these while the work leaders move from one school to another, coordinating the school leaders.

The duties of the work, school or squad leaders require considerable care. Even knowing this, many youth apply and even ask for these jobs and are upset if they aren’t assigned some responsibility during the construction period. When there are newcomers their inexperience is compensated for by someone with experience. The assigning of responsibilities is the result of evaluations done by the volunteers themselves.

Getting one of these job responsibilities doesn’t involve signing any contract. Many agreements come out of informal talks outside the office or after work hours. On one occasion I heard Sabrina ask Yasser, Estelí’s school leader, over lunch if he was up for being work leader of the construction during Holy Week 2013. “First,” said Yasser, “I have to see if I get vacation days on those days from the Call Center where I work. If I do, who will be my co-leader?” Sabrina answered that it might be William, but then suggested that if he didn’t have time maybe he could be the street fundraising coordinator, since he would rather live in the community. “What do you do to get all these kids on board?” I later asked her. “There’s a technique,” Sabrina answered, smiling. “You start six months ahead of time.”

How the construction part works

Everyone meets at a common gathering point—in the case I’ll describe it was the Teresian high school in Managua—and waits until all volunteers who have signed up have arrived. Many who aren’t signed up arrive up to an hour before to pay their quota for transportation and food, which always delays the departure time for the work site.

It’s Friday afternoon and we wait until the afternoon or even night students have arrived as well as some who are no longer students and come from their internships or jobs. Finally, when all 270 volunteers are gathered, they are shown previously prepared videos about the settlement where each specific group will work. Some include a short interview with the community leader or some of its members.

Afterwards, the school leaders introduce themselves and speak about the families for whom the houses will be built. The atmosphere is very spirited, as though preparing for a party. The names of the schools where each group will spend the night are called out and there’s a cheer from each. “Let’s hear from the school of El Belen,” shouts that school’s leader. To my surprise I found some young people were there without a friend, not necessarily because they were first-timers but sometimes because they had already been volunteers on other construction days. I always thought they were groups of inseparable friends but discovered that many come not knowing anyone, in the hope of making new friends, while still others return due to their loyalty to the cause.

It’s already night when we leave the school. They eat some snack they bought beforehand, but I ended up hungry because I didn’t know beforehand there would be no dinner. When we get to at the school where we’ll be sleeping—whether in Chinandega, Leon, Masaya or some other place in the country—we take down our backpacks, mattresses, digging bars, shovels and construction tools. Some run to pick out the best place to put the mattress, hammock or sleeping bag they brought. Others prefer to sleep in the open air.

By the time everything is in order, it’s already ten o’clock at night. Then the school leaders introduce the supervisors, construction leaders and squad leaders. After that, we all have to introduce ourselves: name, age, where we study or work and our color. The greens are those who don’t have a partner, the yellows are those who do but aren’t committed and the reds those who have already formalized their relationship. The ice is broken easily; there’s a lot of teasing and debate about certain concepts such as exclusion, opportunity, gender, censoring and others previously prepared for discussion by the school leaders so we can be aware of them when they crop up.

It’s now close to midnight and time to think about sleep since we have to be awake by 5 the next morning. Some keep talking or playing guitar; others are already snoring. Generally there’s good discipline. Some rules are very strict: no alcohol, sex or drugs. Nor can anyone skip the training activities that go along with the construction.

How a roof is raised

The next day, punctually, the supervisors prepare breakfast and wake the builders with shouts, strident music or “playing” the kitchen pots. Still half asleep, we come to life and eat breakfast. By 7 am, after some dynamic training exercises, we’re already loading the digging bars, shovels, wall panels, nails and even the food the family will prepare for lunch.

Each squad arrives at the respective family with whom it will work. We all introduce ourselves and ask some essential questions: Which direction do you want your house to face? Does any plumbing go through here? These questions are necessary since in previous jobs existing water pipes got broken and the house began to be raised in the wrong direction, which then had to be changed.

The master post has to be placed at the highest point. Then, after measuring, the other three posts are put in place. With this you now have the supports for the four corners of the house. The process is a bit slow at first because a lot of care has to be taken with the foundation so it’s solid and secure. The construction leaders go from house to house making sure the posts are very solid. “This is very loose, take it out and do it again,” they often say. When the four corner posts are in securely, eleven other points are marked where posts will also go. In this work—the most difficult and most strenuous—you can consider yourself lucky to find ground that’s flat and with few rocks.

Often youth from the families receiving the houses help, which makes the work a lot easier. On occasion the family has already taken down its hut made of rubble, plastic and rotten boards so as to have everything ready when the youth squad arrives. But that means they have to sleep in the open not only on the first day of construction but also the night before.

During the work day the settlement fills with people and children wanting to help. As soon as the floor of the house is laid, the first one to enter and seek shade is the dog.

After the posts are in, setting up the structure of the house is easier. The walls are made with wood panels, which are sometimes hard to cut because the saw isn’t very sharp. Once the walls are up, the sheets of zinc roofing are nailed down while others work on the door and windows. The roof must be very tight to prevent leaks that would later have to be repaired.

When the house is ready a blue ribbon is stuck across the door, which the mother or father of the family cuts. This is the official turning over of the house. Everyone—those who built it and those who’ll live in it—says a few words. It’s a very emotional moment.

Between jokes and awareness

Countless amusing anecdotes always arise during the construction, and always jokes for new volunteers. I once saw them send some novices to another squad to get the “needle” to sew the floor. Half an hour later when they came back without this needle, they were greeted with hoots of laughter from the experienced volunteers.
The quality of the breakfasts and dinners cooked by the supervisors is also an occasion for jokes… and a matter of luck. Sometimes the eggs are unsalted or have shells and the beans are infested with weevils.

Lunchtime with the family is a very important moment and the family who owns the house, children included, is invited to sit and eat with the volunteers. Usually they have to eat in shifts because there are never enough chairs or space at the table for everyone at once. During this time together both parties teach, learn from and enrich each other. They talk about whatever comes up: work, tribulations suffered, good moments lived. It’s based on these chats together that many young people recognize having become aware of what poverty is.

Some families are very expressive and sensitive, giving thanks and crying at the end of the construction. The little girl of one house gave Thaís Rodríguez a letter in which the child told her that now she would have a place to do her homework. Thaís told me she had refused invitations to three previous construction jobs before committing to go to her first one because she had neither the desire nor the interest. After much insistence her friends took her to the TECHO kiosk at the American University and threatened her that if she didn’t sign up she couldn’t go to any more activities. She ended up going and has now been building houses as a volunteer for the past five years.

The inevitable polarized atmosphere

Laura Lacayo, TECHO’s social director, explains that “we work in a very open way with all those who want to help overcome poverty.” That includes understanding that the role of the State and the government is indispensable in finding integral solutions.

In practice, the best communication has been between the volunteer youth and the community leaders, some representatives of the governing party or members of the Cabinet of Family, Health and Life, who are also officials. TECHO constantly seeks to work in open spaces that allow for participation by the entire population without exclusion. Laura describes the relationship with the central government and the municipal mayors as somewhat sporadic, with greater openness with the mayors and urban planning officials in several municipal governments.

In other words, relationship experiences with authorities vary. In Jinotega, TECHO had to cancel some constructions because the mayor’s office notified them that the zone in which they were building houses was at high risk for landslides and the families living there would be relocated, although months after the notification there was neither a date nor a zone specified for relocation. Such experiences have taught them to be more cautious in deciding about where to build.

Among the bad experiences, they recall the one of Holy Week 2012. TECHO had permits to use six public schools during the construction projects in four Managua neighborhoods, but halfway through, officials of the health and education ministries showed up to evict the youth from one of the schools. Without presenting any official documents, they came in saying they had to fumigate because there had been an emergency due to Chagas disease. Youth from nearby neighborhoods also came to pressure and intimidate. While the school leaders quickly went to find somewhere else to house the volunteers so they could fulfill the commitment to the families, the fumigation started with the youths still inside the school. In the end, nothing stopped the construction and they finished building the 85 houses scheduled for those days.

Prejudice, criticism, doubts...

An active presence in the Nicaraguan media has positioned TECHO in the national collective imaginary. But it has also triggered a great diversity of opinions about this initiative, much of it biased.
I decided to begin by finding out what TECHO’s youth thought before they joined the organization. To do so I participated in a workshop with 25 both seasoned and recent volunteers organized by anthropologist and volunteer Gabriela Montiel and Training and Volunteers director Sabrina Vega. The result served as a basis for TECHO’s first study of positioning focused on universities throughout Latin America.

In the workshop the boys and girls were very honest, with the majority confessing to not having a good view of the organization before they joined. That perception is shared by many other young people, and by many volunteers’ families. In a country as politicized and polarized as Nicaragua, the organization can’t be spared misinterpretation. “Everything has been said about us,” they comment, “including that only rich kids and those with silver spoons in their mouths join TECHO, that we’re paternalistic and right-wing.” But there’s no single political or party ideology among the TECHO youth. Nor do they come from only one social class. TECHO respects diversity and pluralism more than other institutions in the country.

Nor can the organization protect itself from the skepticism that prevails in a society where it’s hard to believe there are still people willing to work for the common good without receiving anything in return. Some people are convinced that TECHO’s goal is to make money and they comment, “While the government gives away zinc sheets for the roofs of the poorest, you sell them.” Even some friends of volunteers insinuate that they must be earning something.

Valuable youthful stubbornness

Some doubt the quality of the work TECHO does when they discover that those in charge are all under 30. This makes it clear that the insistent talk about the demographic dividend clashes with Nicaragua’s adultist culture.

Age discrimination weighs heavily in our society. Youth is associated with cheap labor and little experience, which of course is sought. Many young professionals can testify to this. Few adults believe young people capable of fulfilling their commitments and obligations without the supervision of someone older. “Without doubt, an organization led by young people has its challenges in Nicaragua,” admits Laura, TECHO Nicaragua’s young social director. People are constantly surprised to deal with her. She doesn’t get upset, understanding that older people have their ideas and accepting that they devalue anything proposed or done by young people.

Many think TECHO is only about mobilizing youth or using new technologies. But the director also sees its proposal as being designed for the settlement families and community leaders.

Others criticize TECHO for accepting money from “dirty businesses” that cover their profit motive with the label of business social responsibility. Still others add that TECHO is just a good excuse for boys and girls to meet each other.

Faced with this whole array of prejudices, the stubbornness of youth is even more valuable since they just laugh at such criticisms. Rebellious youth? Perhaps, but with that very rebelliousness these young people are showing how convinced they are that it’s all worth it. They associate TECHO with learning, change, growth and conviction. The majority of them consider TECHO to have been the starting point of a new vision, an awakening to poverty’s camouflaged reality. They feel that the ideas about inclusion and tolerance they learned are already an important aspect of their new way of being.

The poverty and leadership they see

For these young people the fundamental aspect of their learning and personal growth is their encounter with the poor families. That contact and closeness, which would otherwise be almost impossible, is what impacts them the most.

During the building process the school leaders emphasize analyzing these families’ reality. Every night they discuss, debate and pick apart the prejudices they brought to the settlements, encouraging everyone, even the quiet, timid ones, to join in. No one misses these talks, even if they’re complaining of tiredness or would prefer to sleep given that the work day during building can start at 5:30 am and last until 11 pm. Everyone participates.

Outside of the building dates the Training and Volunteers area organizes other talks and analyses to which all volunteers are invited. It’s hard to attract them because young people flee anything that reminds them of classrooms. Fifty youth is considered a packed house.

The image those in charge give the volunteers is just as important as living with the settlement families. Even when the squad leaders are the same age or are even younger than the volunteer, their image and style is crucial. Whether or not the volunteer returns depends a lot on whether the squad leader is remembered as a great person at the end of the work.

What can TECHO teach?

Beyond any faults or brilliance, TECHO opens a window that allows light to shine on the supposed passivity of Nicaraguan youth, either washing it away or showing the falseness of such a presumption.
Although it’s true that with more staff, more funds and more experience the organization could possibly have more influence and build more emergency houses, what impressed me the most about TECHO, what I found most interesting about it, is its operational dynamics and its ability to get close to young people. Studying this in greater depth would allow an expert in social sciences to understand a bit more about how relationships develop and how Nicaraguan youth take on commitments.

TECHO’s experience shows that philosophical positions, ideological currents and political messages move to a second plane when youth are motivated to act. This happened already in Nicaragua in the case of the elderly who were demanding their pension and the youth who supported them in the OccupyINSS [Social Security] movement. It also happened with the mobilization to save the Bosawas Reserve and with the Ventana movement that looks out for patients in psychiatric hospitals.

It would be an error to underestimate the message these experiences contain, no matter how small, fleeting or unsystematic they are. It became clear to me that offering youth a diversion—such as the government offers with parties or virtual stadiums where they can follow Spain’s soccer league—isn’t the only thing that mobilizes young people. Nor is receiving a salary or free food and abundant alcohol or imposing a religious belief or political ideology on them.

The TECHO experience teaches us that youth are motivated when they see results from their work, fruit of their creation, an opportunity few youths are given in their families, the educational system or even their first work experiences. It might be that the experience of seeing with their own eyes the tangible reality of a house built with their own hands and in a short period of time is a seductive result for those who live in a country with so many frustrations and failures.

TECHO is a growth and development opportunity for every kind of youth—serious and funny ones, believers and agnostics, those in a political party and those who define themselves as apolitical. Everyone is satisfied when seeing their physical efforts transformed into a house for a grateful family in just a couple of days. And at the end, many are left restless, knowing that this house they built with their own hands will never be enough to satisfy their desire to be valuable to society.

“The TECHO generation”

In Chile TECHO has been a source of youth leaders. The first directors, perhaps impetuous and naive, have begun to hold jobs in government or the private sector. Their experience as volunteers helped them gain access to scholarships in universities abroad, from which they returned determined to bring their professional expertise back to their own country. Today more than 80 Chilean government officials are former TECHO volunteers. They’re called “the TECHO generation.” The private sector, valuing their leadership, seeks them out. Chile showed that what began as a project for people during their youth left footprints both in young people and in Chilean society as a whole.

This short-term goal of building houses can feed the birth of more long-term goals that are deeper and more complex. In Nicaragua some young volunteers I’ve spoken with are already beginning to ask themselves how their university studies might become useful in serving their community and country.

Harold Raúl Bellanger is an environmental quality engineer.

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