Maunabo, Puerto Rico (August 2022)

We are heading to Puerto Rico! What a great way to wrap up the summer, doing some meaningful work with like-minded souls in this community.

The Caribbean island of Puerto Rico, which means ‘Rich Port’, is a U.S. territory and its people are U.S. citizens. Puerto Rico is a place rich with history, diversity, and beauty – from the tropical beaches to the delicious food.    Even in the face of heart-breaking devastation and loss, those things are still true.

In September of 2017, Puerto Rico was hit by Hurricane Irma followed by Hurricane Maria. Either one of those hurricanes was enough to cause significant damage, but paired together they devastated the island. It’s estimated that the damages amounted to nearly $90 billion and countless homes were destroyed or damaged.

The Fuller Center for Housing Puerto Rico works to repair and rebuild damaged homes on the southeast corner of the island where the storms first slammed ashore. The largest town in this area, Maunabo, has a population of about 15,000 people and is surrounded by beautiful beaches of blue and green water on one side, and high mountains on the other that keep it secluded from the rest of the island. Volunteers work and stay in a rural community on the outskirts of town called Calzada, which has 184 families plus another 96 families in the surrounding area – all of whom are still in the midst of the long recovery process. It is a rural area far from the capital that certainly was not wealthy even before the storm. Many families are living with blue tarps as roofs and are being affected by unsanitary and unsafe living conditions because of the damage to their homes. But we can help change that!

About the Global Builders Program

Global Builders is The Fuller Center for Housing’s short term volunteer program, sending teams on domestic and international home-building trips, where partner families help build the homes and then will repay the cost on a no-interest basis to help more local families. All trips are hosted by our trustworthy Fuller Center covenant partners around the world, who love having volunteers join them in serving God by partnering with the poor. 

For more information or to join a team, visit https://fullercenter.org/global-builders/.

About The Fuller Center for Housing

The Fuller Center for Housing, faith-driven and Christ-centered, promotes collaborative and innovative partnerships with individuals and organizations in an unrelenting quest to provide adequate shelter for all people in need worldwide. Their foundational principles include the beliefs that: We are part of a God movement, and movements don’t just stop. We have been called to this housing ministry; we didn’t just stumble into it. We are unashamedly Christian, and enthusiastically ecumenical. We aren’t a church but we are a servant of the Church. We are faith-driven, knowing that after we’ve done all we can do the Lord will help finish the job — something that requires us to stretch beyond our rational reach. We are a grass-roots ministry, recognizing that the real work happens on the ground in communities around the world through our covenant partners — so a large, overseeing bureaucracy isn’t needed. We try to follow the teachings of the Bible and believe that it says that we shouldn’t charge interest of the poor, so we don’t. Government has a role in our work in helping set the stage, but that we shouldn’t look to it as a means to fund the building of homes.

To learn more, visit https://fullercenter.org.

This post contains information provided by the Fuller Center for Housing.  Their help and support is much appreciated.

Exploring and learning while enjoying life and doing my part. Here, there and everywhere…