Fund the materials.

What the money buys

Materials, bought locally in Ecuador: whatever the projects that year turn out to need.

• Cement
  Almost every project starts here. Floors, foundations, mortar for the block, the base of a shower. It comes by the bag, and a bathroom takes more of it than people expect.
• Blocks
  The walls. Concrete block goes up fast and holds up in the weather, and it’s what most of Jadán is built from. It’s also the easiest thing to teach someone who has never built anything. It takes about 250 blocks to build a bathroom. We pay about $0.61 a block plus a delivery charge.
• Sand and gravel
  Mixed with cement they become everything else: mortar, concrete, the floor you end up standing on. Unglamorous, heavy, and nothing gets built without it.
• Windows and doors
  A room isn’t finished until it closes. Doors that lock and windows that keep out the cold and the rain are often what separates a structure from a space someone can actually live in.
• Paint
  Usually the last day, and the job everybody wants. It seals the block and keeps the damp out, and it’s the moment a worksite stops looking like a worksite. On bigger projects, or ones with shaky walls, we reinforce with steel, and that steel needs to be painted even though it will never be seen.
• Bio digesters
  Where there’s no sewer line, a bio digester does what a septic system would: it breaks down waste on site. It’s the piece that makes an indoor bathroom possible at all.
• Tools
  Trowels, levels, buckets, shovels, picks, gloves, saws. Bought once, used hard for a week, used again the next year. Replacing what wears out is a small line that never goes away.

What a gift buys

Prices from our supplier in 2026, rounded. They change a little from year to year.

• $7 buys a bag of cement
  Guapan cement, made in Ecuador.
• $30 buys a cubic meter of sand or gravel
  Mixed with cement for mortar, concrete and floors.
• $100 buys about 160 blocks
  Delivered up the hill to the work site.
• $23 buys a steel beam
  For the bond beam that ties the top of the walls together.
• $31 buys a sheet of roofing
  Five meters of teja roma.
• $25 buys a shower
  The fixture, ready to install.
• $50 buys a window
• $80 buys a toilet
  Complete, with tank and fittings.
• $120 buys a door
  One that closes and locks.
• $800 buys a biodigester
  What makes an indoor bathroom possible where there is no sewer line.
• $1,500 builds a whole bathroom
  Materials, the maestro’s labor and the trucking up the hill.