Bacolod Community Development Blog: A house is the only thing I need now !

KUBO concept is ready to be launched

4 months after the hit of Yolanda typhoon, our team which helps in Bantayan Island, has to sadly acknowledge the evidence of insufficient government’s support which is coming drop by drop to the victims. Right now, the survivors don’t have their house repaired or rebuild yet.

The area where we decided to rebuild the houses is inhabited by people surviving in a donated tent for the luckiest ones and the rest is protecting under a stretched tarpaulin roof…

We have conducted several community meetings with affected inhabitants and obviously the major problem remains the same. How to finance the construction of their home, while the economy is recovering very slowly and who will support the work and overseeing the development there?

Fortunately after some weeks of conceptualization our team responsible for the design of a typhoon resilient and affordable native house and has finally come up with a model that can meet the constraints and requirements of the project’s challenges. We call this concept KUBO whose particularity iscombining a house made of local and raw materials (bamboo, limestone, coconut lumbers, pandan, coconut rope … and an “Agri-tecture” garden to provide a source of incomes with vegetables for sale and for personal food at a hand distance.

A KUBO house unit might cost around PHP 50, 000 (USD1200) materials and handy labor works, given it would be cheaper if the purchaser aids to construct.

We do not encourage donation but micro -finance in order to reinvest the repayments to finance another KUBO house development and also to actively maintain the sense of ownership of the beneficiaries and have limitation of dependency.

Financial assistance to purchasers would be around PHP 20,000 (USD 460). The PHP 30,000 remaining will be collected within a biweekly repayments worth of PHP400 ... borrowing rate will be reduced to a minimum to cover essentially the costs of supervision, tools purchase and training.

Therefore the house will be fully paid in more or less 5 years.

As of now, we have also received donations to cover the exceptional recovery assistance of income-generating activities (pandan leaves weaving, gardening, breeding, canteens foods). Without the revival of economic activity among its families, return to "normal" life of the entire community is not possible. Today,emergency NGOs are no longer there so that is the real survival time which really begins now.

A group of 10 chosen women will now benefit from the pandan weaving re-launching program activities which are including financial assistance, training and marketing support from ANP organization. That would surely help them to become autonomous within a working year.

As a preliminary bill of materials details, our current donations received through the generous donors of Global Giving should enable it to finance as a beginning8 houses to be built in the affected areas... And a prototype house in order to validate the concept and overall costs estimation of the KUBO under construction process.

He have 3 identified areas as targeted areas, Purok Okoy and Pooc in Santa Fe municipality and one really remote in Mambacayao Diot Island from Bantayan municipality.

A big thank you to all the volunteers who has tirelessly been working to find a solution of innovative home and tailored to local and post- disaster contexts typhoon and for their commitment to help the victims to overcome the typhoon damages and economic poverty.