Francesco Piazzesi
Chief Executive Officer

About Francesco Piazzesi

Country:  Mexico
Region:  Central America
Mission:  Échale a tu casa is a social franchise program developed by Ecoblock International. It aims to facilitate self-build processes by providing technical training and assistance as well as financial support to low-income rural families, and to facilitate a collective organization process.
Sector:  Housing
Year Founded:  1997
Website:  Échale a tu Casa
Description: 

Échale works with rural families living in precarious conditions and in need of adequate housing, providing support in the construction of homes that offer a safe and secure environment, and building social capital within communities. It is designed to bring community organization to the common practice of self-build in rural areas, by organizing the community into Social Housing Production Units (SHPUs), a group made up of community members and homeowners responsible for the implementation of the self-build process. All construction work is carried out collectively, with neighbors pooling their labor to help each other build their homes.

Social Impact: 

Échale has provided affordable homes to 30,000 families as well as 150,000 home improvements, creating a social impact for 900,000 people with a USD 65 million economic spill over.

Échale’s approach involves the creation of a housing committee, which holds regular meetings and is tasked with developing the housing program, interacting with other stakeholders and replicating the social franchise. The social franchise replication model is community-based, with local leaders taking on supervisory roles over multiple community construction projects in exchange for a commission.

Échale houses are built using Adoblock, a stabilized compressed earth block mainly made from local, non-fertile soil (90 per cent) mixed with water and cement. The blocks are produced locally by the residents using the Adopress machine. The use of alternative building materials has helped to reduce deforestation for constrution materials and reduces the amount of wood needed by families for fuel.

The Échale homes include a range of environmental features, including rainwater harvesting systems (reducing mains water use by 20 per cent), bio digesters which produce fertilizer and methane gas, wood conserving stoves, solar water heaters, and solar low-energy light bulbs (reducing the use of mains electricity by 10 per cent).