Cementing Family Futures

For thousands of Mexicans like Rosa Magana, the dream of living in a home large enough to humanely accommodate her family hovered far on the horizon. Then an initiative by a local building supply company in Guadalajara gave her the tools to make her dream come true. “Now I have a house in which my family lives a much better and more dignified life,” she said.

The company, cement manufacturer Cemex, found a way to address the numerous barriers to home building and home expansion for the millions of families living in single room shacks of corrugated metal or cardboard. It isn’t just the expense that holds families back, although that is definitely one problem.

It isn’t easy to save for home projects when you make under $5 a day. Many would try to save money for building supplies, but almost always ended up spending it elsewhere. Sometimes it went to emergencies, school fees, or loans to friends in trouble. But a surprising amount was spent on what Cemex consultant Israel Moreno refers to as “social capital.”

In the tradition of many poor communities, social status comes not from what you own, but what you contribute to the social life of the community. This means parties.  “Much of their money goes to weddings, music and parties for everything,” says Moreno.

For families who did manage to put aside money to buy a bag of cement--at the cost of two days’ wages-- it was often of poor quality and more or less than needed. And there was the question of where to put it.  With four children in a 400 square foot home, storage was of necessity outside, where a single rain would harden the cement and render it unusable.

On average, Moreno found, it took families four years just to build one room and thirteen years to build a small four -room house. Many of them just gave up.

"Imagine one room with ten persons living together, yelling and fighting all day long,” says Moreno. This kind of crowding sorely strains family ties and often propels children into the street, where crime and prostitution are rampant.

So Moreno set up a program that was aimed at helping people do three things: save up to buy the right amount of cement; store it until they were ready to build; and celebrate the homeowner’s accomplishment and contribution to community development in a very public way.

In 2002, Cemex and Moreno launched a program called “Patrimonio Hoy” that invited families to enter into partnership with Cemex to help them improve their homes. Patrimonio Hoy, literally means “patrimony today.”  It refers to a Mexican tradition of creating something of value that will be passed on to future generations. 

The program builds on the community’s traditional values, while it helps develop a new set of values that form the foundation for a new way of life.

Moreno began with the wives, since they are historically better savers and bear the larger burden of the family’s overall well-being.  Then, he turned the idea of social capital into an engine for success. 

Improving on the existing system of the housewife-run savings clubs called tandas and micro-credit strategies developed by Grameen Bank, Patrimonio Hoy set up savings clubs for building supplies. Members were invited to form clubs in groups of three, in which each member contributed a minimum of 120 pesos per week (about $16 US).

After only two weeks, each family received its first installment of cement and supplies, essentially on credit against their future payments to the club. Every ten weeks thereafter, they received a new delivery of supplies for a total of about 78 weeks.  Throughout, the program offers optional storage as well as the advice of professional builders, engineers and architects.

Morales was confident these women would make good on future payments. “If you don't have money you depend on your name,” says Morales, “your social capital.”

Cemex also had to prove that it would honor its commitments, making sure that every process was transparent, allowing members of the club to enforce the rules themselves and even turning promotion of the program to women who had been early participants. 

Along the way Cemex made sure that a family’s achievements would be listed in the paper, where all their neighbors could see.  The company funded parties and celebrations for the highest contributors, the fastest builders and best promoters. And when the work was finished, they helped each family throw their own party for all the neighbors in their new home. 

To date, 205,000 Mexican families have joined Patrimonio Hoy, successfully building over 105,000 rooms.   For Rosa Magaña, the program helped her family expand their 275 sq. foot space to 475 sq. feet so that the family of three no longer has to eat, sleep and live together in the same tiny room.

Cemex, has launched Patrimonio Hoy in 22 Mexican states as well as in Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Costa Rica.  The program paid for itself in the first four years, and the market is growing steadily in this previously overlooked market.  “Cement by itself doesn’t solve anything,” Moreno says.  The key was selling not just product, but the solutions too.