UC’s new project to build seven houses as part of its volunteer work

This week more than 1,100 young people left for missions and summer jobs, summoned by the UC Pastoral. This year the “Housing” project stands out, which will be carried out for the first time. In this initiative, 140 young people will build seven houses of 36 or 54 square meters in Lampa and Batuco.

For the first time, 140 young people will build seven houses in 10 days. This is a completely new project of the Pastoral UC, which will build houses of 36 and 54 square meters in Lampa and Batuco. Under the name of Housing , the initiative promises to deliver much more than a structure, but rather a home.

This project joins Misión País , Capilla País , Siembra UC and Coro Misión País , initiatives of the Directorate of Pastoral Care and Christian Culture of the UC, whose volunteers will be between January 4 and 13 building chapels and homes, in addition to accompanying people delivering the message of hope in Christ, in 46 locations in nine regions of the country. On this occasion, it will be from Alto Hospicio (Iquique) to Puelo (Los Lagos), that is, from the Tarapacá region to Los Lagos.

The UC senior chaplain, priest Jorge Merino, celebrated a sending mass in which he stated: “I assure you that what we are going to experience these days will fill our hearts in a way that only God can do. It is what happens when one leaves oneself and gives oneself to others. And you have already experienced it,” said the priest, adding that “when God invites us, and we say yes, that fills our hearts.”

“When I visit the communities, they thank me for these ambassadors of the Catholic University, that is very gratifying” – Rector Ignacio Sánchez

The rector Ignacio Sánchez, meanwhile, expressed: “I am happy to accompany you. It is very exciting to be here. (…) It has been said a lot that in missions and jobs one always brings back more than what he leaves behind. You bring more because you meet the communities, and they give us their hope and longing. When I visit the communities, they thank me for these ambassadors of the Catholic University, that is very pleasing”.

The new project “Housing”: seven works for the Metropolitan region
The great novelty of this version of missions and summer jobs is delivered by the new Housing project . Its general coordinator, the student Ingrid Ordóñez, says: “These have been very intense months, but with a lot of joy and hope, especially having shared with the communities, with the families, which leaves us more hopeful and with more desire, knowing that we are helping to build a home for these families so that they can continue to develop afterwards”.

Ingrid says that work is being done to have a long-term relationship with the beneficiaries of these houses: “Something that marks the project a lot is the ‘Links’ pillar, which in the end is this connection that we want to establish with the families, which go beyond these ten days of missions.”

“In Housing it is not just building houses, it is building homes; perhaps a ‘simpler’ way of reaching people, much more concrete” – Ingrid Ordóñez, general coordinator of the UC Pastoral Housing project

“It is an area that is 40 minutes from Santiago, which has allowed us to involve families in the previous process. We already know them, they have a name for us, they have a face for us and it is like that for us too. At the beginning of the year we started working thinking about numbers, but now, with the bonds created, they are people, families, Mrs. Elsa, Jorge, etc”.

Some details of Housing:
The construction of seven houses for Lampa families will be built on radier.

These are prefabricated houses of 36 and 54 square meters, depending on the number of people in the family nucleus.

Each house is built by 20 university volunteers, with a total of 140.

There will be technical assistance from the municipality for more complex issues such as electrification.

Each project is coordinated by a team of UC students who, for a year, take charge of leading the initiatives, finalizing the details so that they are carried out correctly. In addition, they provide the guidelines regarding the spirit that mobilizes each group of volunteers.

Misión País is a student project that since 2004 has brought more than 30,000 young missionaries to nearly 500 areas from Arica to Punta Arenas. From its missionary identity, the project seeks to respond to the needs of the Chilean Church by providing help to all the dioceses of the country.

“Since April 2022 we began with the preparations for these missions and in August it began to take shape little by little, with the council, zone heads, teams and volunteers. So it is a preparation that takes almost a whole year, although more work has been seen in recent months”, says Teresita Grohnert, national coordinator of Misión País.

For its part, Capilla País was born as an initiative that sought to build new temples for the visit of Pope Francis to Chile, in 2018, in urban peripheries where the Church has not been able to expand . Since its creation, 101 chapels have been built.

José Andrés Prado, national coordinator of Capilla País, says that “we are going to do twelve constructions and reconstructions of chapels, in addition to improving the areas of a home. We want to reach very peripheral areas of our country and that do not have much help. Being able to demonstrate that, even if we are volunteers, we have the strength and organization necessary to reach these places, generating a concrete change”.

Siembra UC is a missionary project where university students lead groups of students from the third and fourth grades, creating spaces for vocational training and exchange, in addition to spreading the word of Christ with the vitality that characterizes them.

Francisco Errázuriz, general coordinator of the project, says that “what we want is to generate a response to God’s call to holiness, working on hope and courage. Hope, because we want to leave and radiate that energy and joy of the Catholic. And courage regarding the consistency of being Catholic today.

The Country Mission Choir seeks to be an instrument for Christ to reach the hearts of all people, through music and singing. They will tour the different communities facilitating the encounter with God through their songs.

“Music has the ability to transform: transform a prayer into an intimate encounter with Christ; transform a mission into a deep friendship; transform a building into a happy place; transform a heart into a heart on fire”, said the general coordinators of the project, María José Chadwick and Manuel Jouanne.