Starting Over in Sri Lanka

The Minnesota Sri Lanka Friendship Foundation (MNSLFF) has completed construction on the first 50 new homes built on a site in Monrovia, Sri Lanka. The homes are small, just 600 square feet, but more then enough when you're family of five has been sharing a metal shack with snakes, mice and mosquitoes for the past 14 months.

The homes are solidly built and employ a traditional Sri Lankan arrangement of spaces as well as many traditional passive cooling techniques. Each was built for a mere $7,000 (that's roughly $12/sqft). See MNSLFF's photo diaries of the construction and now finished new homes.





These 50 homes are just a small part of the first 20,000 houses to be built since January of 2005. 80,000 families are still without adequate shelter over their heads. Read Brian Bonner's article about Anil and Kamani, whose family just moved into their new home.