Adopt a Family
Mi Cometa’s building “mingas” (collective community constructions) require immense numbers of people. Adopt a Family accepts and trains church groups from the United States to participate in house building campaigns.
Each year, forty volunteers come to Guasmo, a shantytown near Guayaquil, and live with local families for several weeks. Some of the volunteers are masons or carpenters or plumbers, while others simple have willing hands. None the less, the Adopt a Family program isn’t just about construction of houses -- it’s about the construction of relationships. The volunteers make friends and learn how poverty effects individual families.
In the future, Adopt a Family hopes to become an integrated program of “social tourism,” where volunteer-tourists come to work, to learn about Ecuadorian culture, and to contribute to the local economy.
