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Much more than a home

For more than a decade, Patrimonio Hoy has helped to address the housing deficit in Latin America and improve the lives of low-income families. By providing access to microcredit, building materials, and technical expertise, the program helps families build or add to their homes more quickly, more efficiently, and with better materials than would otherwise be possible for these customers.

Patrimonio Hoy’s benefits reach far beyond housing to improve participants’ self-esteem and learning environments, as well as to further local economic development and improve schools, sports facilities, and other public spaces.

The program creates jobs among local masons and, in particular, provides opportunities for meaningful work for women. Patrimonio Hoy program promoters, most of whom are women, are well-respected individuals who have developed strong relationships in their communities. Patrimonio Hoy trains them to market the program and to organize the groups of families that will collaborate to borrow and repay their construction loans. In addition to providing meaningful income, Patrimonio Hoy provides work training and experience helps to empower these women. In fact, more than half of the promoters hired in Mexico had no previous work experience.

Throughout its ten years in operation, Patrimonio Hoy has served 1.3 million people and 260,000 families in Latin America. The stories of María Diega and Rosa Magaña, two participants, illustrate the life-changing impact that Patrimonio Hoy can have on its participants.

María Diega and her family of six lived in a single-room dwelling for eight years. In just five years after María became a Patrimonio Hoy participant—rather than the lifetime of work it may have taken otherwise—she and her family added seven rooms and a staircase to their home. “Without Patrimonio Hoy, we would still be crowded, uncomfortable, and angry. Since we became part of the program my husband and I are more united, as he stays home during the weekends to keep building our house. We see the Patrimonio Hoy team as part of our family,” Mrs. Diega explains.

Rosa Magaña also credits Patrimonio Hoy with changing her life. She and her husband built their 120-square-meter house after living with their two children in a 10-square-meter carton shed with no bathroom for six years. They are now completing two additional rooms and a soldering and welding workshop. Patrimonio Hoy has helped them build both a home and their own business. “Without the program,” Mrs. Magaña says, “I’m sure we would still be living in the same conditions.”

Patrimonio Hoy’s success has spurred us to develop other social enterprises in Latin America and other developing countries that deliver social and economic value to low-income communities.

Rebuilding Communities: ConstruApoyo

ConstruApoyo was developed to help communities respond to Hurricanes Stan and Wilma, which devastated much of Chiapas, Mexico, in 2005. In the wake of these and other disasters, a priority for governments, nongovernmental organizations, and the affected communities is to rebuild quickly, efficiently, and with minimal waste. ConstruApoyo addresses all of these needs, and more.

The program works as follows: Following a disaster, the regional government identifies beneficiaries and provides the funds. CEMEX distributes the funds in the form of debit cards, produces a catalogue of materials at fixed prices, manages the entire supply chain, and reports to the government the results of the program. ConstruApoyo serves as a model of efficiency and transparency in disaster relief: the program speeds the delivery of financial assistance, enables real-time tracking of materials delivery, and provides an audit trail showing how funds are spent.

ConstruApoyo has proved so successful that CEMEX has expanded the model beyond natural disaster relief to other government-subsidized housing and community infrastructure initiatives.

Strengthening Community Infrastructure: Lazos Familiares

Also begun in 2005, our Lazos Familiares program helps communities build and renovate community institutions and buildings, such as health centers, hospitals, orphanages, and schools. With the assistance of the program’s 625 clients and distributors, as well as individuals in the communities, Lazos Familiares has completed 39 projects representing a total of 15,902 square meters of built or renovated community infrastructure and has benefitted more than 33,600 people.

In 2009 alone, the project was responsible for the completion of seven building projects in seven Mexico cities—Villahermosa, Los Cabos, Monterrey, Pachuca, Aguascalientes, San Felipe, and Cancún—serving 955 beneficiaries through 1,187 square meters built and 3,125 square meters rebuilt. In addition, five projects in five other cities, Oaxaca, Uruapan, Tlaxcala, Culiacán, and Reynosa, were initiated through this program during the year.

Improving Neighborhoods: Mejora tu Calle

Mejora tu Calle helps communities and governments work together to improve neighborhoods. Through this program, which unites public- and private-sector efforts to prove a market-based solution to address critical paving needs, we provide microloans to community residents. The residents use the funds to help pay for the paving of streets and sidewalks with cement. By combining community contributions with government funding, most projects are completed in just 70 weeks, rather than the up to 10 years that is more typical in low-income neighborhoods. These paved streets make it easier for people to travel, increase neighborhood safety, and improve access to public services such as electricity, sewage, and transportation. As a result of the program, property values and incomes rise in the communities that Mejora tu Calle serves.

Since the program began operation, more than 35,000 micro-loans have been allocated to finance cement paving of 400,000 square meters in twelve municipalities, benefiting 7,000 low-income families.

We are seeking to replicate the model within Mexico municipalities whose streets are unpaved, and so the program focuses on municipalities subject to low tax-collection levels and low tariff levels for the delivery of public services. The program could facilitate the paving of 20 million square meters in 50 major cities in Mexico. If the program continues to succeed in Mexico, we can replicate it in virtually any country in Latin America.

In Development: A Program to Fostering Community Development in Asia

In Asia, in particular the Philippines, we're building a comprehensive community development program for the poor using housing as a core driver. The program will provide microfinance support for those who need to build new houses, as well as those who need to rehabilitate homes that were severely damaged by Typhoon Ondoy.

This program will be implemented in partnership with the local microfinance institution TSPI Development Corporation. We will provide funds to TSPI for use in seven regions: Antipolo, Montalban, Taytay, Taguig, Paranaque, Las Pinas, and Makati. We will provide training and technical assistance on matters related to construction, such as technical evaluation, design and construction methodology, cost estimates, materials procurement, hiring labor and mobilizing volunteer laborers for construction, and overall site management.

In addition, we have entered into an agreement with the Subdivision and Housing Developers Association (SHDA) in the Philippines, which works with the Philippines government in its effort to provide housing of suitable quality for millions of low- and middle-income Filipino families. Through the agreement, we will supply our cement products CEMEX Palitada King, Rizal Super, and Rizal Green for the various SHDA member housing projects. This agreement will help us to achieve our goals with respect to the development of the housing industry in this country.

"CEMEX joins this collaborative effort to help uplift Filipino families and gear them towards a better quality of life by addressing urban housing woes... with this agreement, it is possible for the Filipino dream to own a home become a reality."

– Sergio Menendez, Country President CEMEX in the Philippines