We began our work in 1987, when we managed and developed housing and communal development projects for underprivileged groups. At that time, self-help construction became our main working methodology, which allowed thousands of families to have access to housing. Then we evolved until we developed an agile, trustworthy and effective practice, which allowed families to reduce construction time from one or two years to five months, as it is done today.
Even though we still operate under self-help construction principles with underprivileged people, we have also increased our offerings to include direct house delivery, as part of our efforts to adapt to the country’s social and economical contexts. We also offer a housing and credit plan for families with medium or small incomes, which enables new families and those with limited resources to have access to quality housing at an affordable price, with the support from an organization that has more than 20 years of unquestionable service with more than 22 thousand families helped and 100 projects built.
Since our beginnings, we have stand out for our work with the more vulnerable sectors, such as families in poverty, women heads of household, those affected by hurricanes, earthquakes or emergencies, immigrants and war refugees.
Our history relates to the putting together of a technical organization in the housing field that, besides construction and credit generation, has developed a whole community platform so that our projects, and others, can be socially built as a working network where organization and participation are key elements in cohabitation and community projection within what is called Social Production of Habitat.
Just as valuable is our trajectory in the production of knowledge on housing and community development, which has resulted from our experience and reflection. We have become consultants for local and national governments, international programs and organisms that want to get acquainted with housing situations and alternatives to work with groups of different economic backgrounds.
Our work with communities, housing projects and our role as consultants and analysts of Costa Rican housing reality, are the best evidence of our work and commitment to dignifying families through housing. At FUPROVI, we have accumulated a rich and useful experience on social housing, where a roof means dignity, a house means a home and the project means the community.
Since 1991, we at FUPROVI have developed international programmes to foster the exchange of experiences and knowledge among Latin American, and specially Central American and Caribbean, non-for-profit organization, as well as promoting the use of new methodologies in the financial, technical, administrative and social fields, and in programs and projects to fight poverty. From 1991 to 1997 we acted as sub regional coordinators of the Program for the Strengthening and Training of Latin American NGOs (FICONG) and, also for the Allegiances Strengthening Program (FORTAL) in the Central America and Caribbean region.
