.jpg)
Pembridge Insurance staff, joined by fellow broker partners, recently engaged in a charitable mission to build homes for underprivileged residents of Nicaragua.
The insurer has “actively supported” the charitable organization Bridges to Community Canada (BTCC) for the past two years – the Nicaragua mission is the non-profit’s latest project.
Nicaragua is the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere; and, recognizing the destitute conditions some of the country’s citizens are in, Pembridge partnered with BTCC to provide improved housing to less fortunate Nicaraguans.
The insurance firm’s staff and a number of the company’s broker partners formed a “Pembridge and Friends” group to participate in the charity mission. The group recently made two trips to the Jinotega region to build homes.
“The situation in the region is unacceptable,” said Pembridge Insurance president and COO Bob Tisdale.
Tisdale described the dire conditions residents of the area were living in.
“Resident homes are made of scrap wood and plastic sheeting, held together with rope,” he said. “The floor is mud and fraught with unsanitary bacteria. It gives me such pride that a week’s worth of hard work really changes the lives of these families.”
During the Pembridge and Friends’ most recent trip, the group constructed two sturdy cinderblock homes – both hurricane and earthquake resistant. Locals came to help the group, inspiring the volunteer workers with their physical strength and tenacity.
“It was amazing to see these local small men lifting huge cinder blocks and bags of concrete up hills and down long roads, hardly breaking a sweat,” Tisdale recounted. “Not only that, they would never take a break even when we did.”
The homes roughly cost about $7,000 to build – funded primarily via donations. However, the properties are not offered entirely free-of-charge; the homeowners must pay a $1,000 loan back over a period of 10 years.
