Chris Johnson | Posted on January 3, 2025 |

Salvadorans embrace volunteers and winds of change in Apaneca

APANECA, El Salvador — A constant stiff breeze curls its way through the dirt streets of the community high in Salvadoran coffee country, stirring up dust in this dry season and rattling the metal of shack after shack.

These rattles sounded more ominous before the winds of change took over. Today, hope is in the air as flimsy shacks of tin, sticks and plastic are being replaced by solid, safe new Fuller Center for Housing homes that protect families from drafts and shield them from relentless summer rains.

While most recent Fuller Center for Housing communities in El Salvador have risen on large, empty plots of land with dozens of homes going up at a time, the homes in Apaneca are going up in small spaces next to the shacks they are replacing — one by one. A total of 75 homes eventually will replace all the shacks with 13 built so far.

This quaint but welcoming community is where Fuller Center Global Builders volunteer teams are working alongside partner families, and they are falling in love with Apaneca and its residents.

“It’s just a lovely spot,” Fuller Center President David Snell said during a site visit last month. “Folks here are very friendly by nature. When you bring folks from abroad to help in this countryside, they just love them to death. Plus, the climate is so fresh unlike down in San Salvador where it tends to be hot.”

Most of Apaneca’s residents work in the coffee industry, and it is the heart of harvest season. Antonio is a harvester, but on this day he found time to work on the floors of the new home he will share with wife Doris. They currently live in a metal shack adjacent to the build.

“It’s a little uncomfortable and crowded right now, but looking at what we’re about to have makes us very happy,” Doris said.

“We like seeing our house go up, but we also like seeing other houses going up in the community,” Antonio said. “It’s good for the whole community. We’re grateful and happy to have this new home and especially grateful to the donors, the volunteers and the organizations who have made it possible for us to have a decent home with solid walls and a roof.”

Yeseña, knows how they feel. Just two years ago, she and her son moved into one of the 50 new Fuller Center homes of the nearby Juayua community. Now, she takes a bus to Apaneca for her new job as construction manager for the Apaneca homes.

“When I was working on my own house, they noticed that I was a good worker and asked if I would come work here,” she said of The Fuller Center’s local building partner, Gente Ayudando Gente (The People Helping People Network) “I said ‘yes.’ I love having my own house for me and my son. It’s been a blessing to us, and it’s a blessing doing this. And the Global Builders have been wonderful and hard-working.”

Dave Diffendal, who leads various Fuller builds in the U.S. and hosts the new “More Than Houses” podcast, was among the earliest teams of Global Builders. It was a unique perspective, he said, to see the new house going up beside the old shack. In fact, the partner family had to reconfigure their shack to make room for the build.

“One of the most striking features of that build was the fact that the family was living on the site,” Diffendal said. “They took apart their previously rough and substandard house that they were living in and reassembled it on the rear of the site so that we could build their house on the front of it.”

While that before-and-after scene may have been striking, it’s not the reason he and other Global Builders fell in love with the project.

“It was a perfect blend of work and play,” Diffendal added. “We got to see volcanoes, have dinner in a wonderfully small and authentic town, made pupusas with the locals, and visited a coffee farm. There was a feeling of authenticity with what we were doing. Each morning as a group we walked together to the worksites, and the camaraderie both within our build group and with the rest of the community was wonderful.”

While Antonio and Doris are putting the finishing touches on house 13, an enticing smell wafts from a Fuller Center home down the street — house No. 2. That’s where master baker Bella is checking the progress of dozens of items in the large oven of her Fuller Center home. With her welcoming smile and knack for baking delicious artisan bread, she is a rather popular neighbor.

Not only has Bella’s family benefited from having a simple, decent place to live and work, but she has attended People Helping People’s culinary school and is now taking a three-plus-hours bus ride into San Salvador on the weekends to study English at PHP’s Center for Hope.

While her oven is massive to accommodate her bustling bakery business, another prominent feature in Bella’s kitchen is a group photo of the Global Builders team that helped her family build the home, including Diffendal.

“It’s changed our lives,” she said. “Our old house was in this spot, and we worked on it and tried to improve it, but we never had enough money to get it done. And we couldn’t get a good roof on it, so rain would come in. So this has been a great blessing.”