A Simple Response...

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The very concept of The Hands Foundation began after Darrell and Chauncey Marrier’s first trip to Monterrey. Mexico. The sights, sounds and smell of such abject poverty were life-changing. People were seen constructing shelters out of any and all possible materials.

People were allowed to build only in plots of land in the desert where they would burrow into hillsides to set up housing. The floors were dirt. There was no accessible water except for what was delivered weekly and dumped unceremoniously into barrels in front of their shelters. There were obviously no toilets except for buckets set in holes in the ground. The poverty was palpable.

The first year saw the Marriers and their crew patching a rooftop on a senior living facility. The work was grueling; pulling buckets of mix up the side of the building with rope and mixing it by hand on the rooftop. The concrete was transported by wheelbarrows across the desert sand to its destination. But this was not enough, not nearly enough…

After that first trip, the Marriers decided to take the initiative for something larger; not just patching and repairing, but constructing. The Hands Foundation was created and the first project was to actually build houses for people in the shack communities dotted around the city.

During the first year, the Marriers met a man named Oscar Martinez who had the camp where the team members had stayed that first year. The job fell to Oscar to find the families that most needed the housing each year.  Oscar did the scouting and screening to ensure that the most needy families were attended.