I and Casita Linda’s Board of Directors, on behalf of all the families we have served, thank you for your generosity. We are extremely grateful to those of you who have involved not only yourselves but have invited your family and friends to support us financially. Our ability to provide adequate housing for those living in extreme poverty in Mexico simply would be impossible without you.

We are finishing our 46th casita as I write, and slowly but surely, with your help and that of others, we are developing the internal infrastructure we need to most effectively meet our broad goal of altering the destiny of poverty for the families for whom we are able to build these modest homes.

We now have three casita models on the same footprint (small, medium, and large) and are thus able to better adjust the casita size to a family's actual needs. We have this year also been organizing a donor database to enable us to more systematically reach out to and keep in touch with all those good people who have been so generous over the years. We are visiting each family for whom we have built a casita to assure everything is in good working order, that children are in school, and that everyone has enough to eat. The smiles on the faces of Maria del Pilar and her two daughters, Maria Cristal and Karla, tell the story.

 None of our officers or members of our Board of Directors receive wages or other benefits. The only individuals who receive any pay are the individuals on our 4 member Mexican construction team, and our Assistant Director, Lucia Wright Contreras, also a Mexican. Lucia graduated recently from the University of Guanajuato and is a bilingual architect with a strong background in building more adequate housing for those living in extreme poverty. We operate on a budget that is very carefully managed, and more than 90% of your contribution goes directly toward the construction of casitas.

This has been a particularly lean year for Casita Linda, and we are of course hopeful that you and your friends or members of your family will be able to support our work this next year. We are very appreciative of your past donations.

Let's hope 2012 brings more peace to the world and that the least fortunate among us are helped in some way through the generosity of individuals like you.

Admiring the Patsari Stove

Volunters Celebrate Another Casita!

Links:

• Casita Linda in the News
• Time-Lapse Video of a Casita Being Built
• Check Out Our Facebook Page