Ravindra Kathe is a farmer and lives with his wife Dana, his mother Valka, three daughters Reshma, Roshan and Mayuri and a son Tejas. The family lived in a dilapidated home for over 10 years. Ravindra’s wife, Dana, had always lived in a house made of bricks. Moving to a new yet a makeshift house after marriage was inconvenient for her. She found it extremely difficult. During monsoons the snakes would enter their house, the floor was perpetually wet and the mud from the roof would fall in their food.

Since there were no lights in their house, their children would get scared at night. Ravindra, like many others living in these poorly built houses, had to source the branches from the forests once every two years to repair the hut. As the size of the house was small, it could hardly accommodate his entire family leaving no space to provide any privacy. With the lack of a sanitation unit, all of them – including the children and his elderly mother – were forced to defecate in the open. The family faced a lot of troubles in the absence of a decent home.

To give his family a stable life and a better future, Ravindra partnered with Habitat for Humanity India in November 2016 to build a well-built and secure home for his family. With immediate effect the preliminaries were put in place and Ravindra’s new home was under construction by December 2016. The family was so thrilled about their new home that both Ravindra and Dana contributed in the construction through sweat equity by moulding bricks, collecting wood and helping out with other labour work. By the first half of 2017, Ravindra and his family moved into their new home. Ravindra and Dana’s home now has a bedroom, a separate kitchen and space for a bathroom as well. When asked about the importance of moving into a brick house, Ravindra said

“A clean house means clean thoughts. Earlier our house was like a hut. We used to bring reed (karvi) branches from the jungle and weave it with cow dung to keep the house steady. The problems of water leakage and the monsoon rains would attract mosquitoes and snakes and we faced a lot of difficulty. Now after the support from Habitat and our own hard work things have become better.”

Dana adds “After shifting into the new house, everything seems better. Our children have plenty of space to play and to study. They enjoy their new house.” Ravindra and Dana are now motivated to build a better future for themselves and their children and are thrilled about living in a house which will have provisions like electricity and an inbuilt toilet.