100 families in Potrerillos had their dirt floors replaced with concrete floors

Potrerillos, Cortés, July 16, 2024.

In conjunction with the Municipality of Potrerillos, Cortés and Cementos del Norte (Cenosa), we closed the project to replace 50 dirt floors with concrete floors for families in extremely vulnerable conditions, to whom water filters were also delivered to ensure that they have safe access to the vital liquid. In addition, a new agreement was signed to benefit 50 more families in this municipality in the near future.

During the recently completed fiscal year, from July 2023 to June 2024, Habitat Honduras built a total of 1,075 concrete floors, as part of the organization’s global initiative called “100,000 floors to play on”, which aims to transform the lives of 100,000 families throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, positively impacting the lives of the most vulnerable, especially children, who are in direct contact with the earth, the surface on which they play, walk and crawl.

This initiative represents an improvement in the families’ health, since the dirt floors on which they used to live harbor all kinds of parasites and bacteria that can cause serious diseases such as diarrhea, parasitic and respiratory infections, anemia, immunodeficiency and malnutrition.

A study by the World Bank and the University of California confirms that replacing a dirt floor in a home generates direct benefits in the health of families: children had a 70% reduction in parasitic infections, 49% in diarrhea and 81% in anemia; in addition to increasing cognitive development from 36% to 96%.

“100 thousand floors to play” is part of Habitat’s mission, which is to demonstrate God’s love in action, since to date it has built more than 41 thousand housing solutions during its more than 30 years of presence in Honduras, where according to reports from the National Institute of Statistics (INE) updated to 2023, there are 2 million 544 thousand 629 homes and 2 million 613 thousand 199 households, of which 9.4% are in overcrowded conditions.