A Chicken Coop
Dennis Allan
We spent the day helping to build a chicken coop. Our trip is primarily focused on the children in Casa Libertad y Sanidad. Each time we bring a team, though, we also focus on helping Daniel and Jessenia accomplish a project that they've wanted to undertake but have not had the time or the financial resource to do so. Last year, two separate teams helped to repaint the entire children's home. This year, we're helping to build a chicken coop.
Liz and Bethany cure the wood that our team is using to build the chicken coop.
Every year Daniel and Jessenia need to fundraise approximately $55,000 to fund their work with the children and the children's home. That budget covers the cost of two full-time house moms who live at the children's home full-time and get four days off per month, a security guard and groundskeeper, and all of the costs associated with caring for and raising Tatiana, Diana, Bianca, Margine, Elias, Jan, and Jeremy. Those costs include tuition to a private Christian school, school materials, food and clothing, and other miscellaneous items. This $55,000 does not include their own personal expenses.
The chicken coop sits on a piece of property that has been loaned to Daniel and Jessenia and their ministry. There is a chance that they could own the land in the future. In the meantime, they are able to use the land however they would like to support and advance their ministry. The chicken coop will allow Daniel and Jessenia to not only own chickens who will lay enough eggs to provide all of the eggs the children will eat and who will lay eggs that can be packaged and sold to a local ministry that a close friend works for. The local ministry provides food items and other goods to low-income women so that they can have a small store in their house and earn money for their families.
This chicken coop, then, will directly serve Daniel and Jessenia's ministry by providing eggs for the children and it will also produce revenue to assist in fundraising and to begin moving the ministry toward self-sustainability. We will return tomorrow so that when we leave the chicken coop will be finished.