Dear Mapua archi students,

First, let me thank you for agreeing to take on our socialized housing project. I hope that this will be a valuable practical learning experience for you and we hope to benefit from it too.

To have a meaningful engagement, I think it is best that I provide you with necessary information about our needs and branding. I know you are all excited to express your creativity and innovation and I encourage you to do that. But please keep in mind that these should address our need for practical and functional space.

Microfinance

SEDPI is a group of social enterprises and one of its core activity is the provision of access to financial services to low income households, particularly women, in rural areas. Along with savings, insurance and loans; we also provide financial education to our nanays to equip them with knowledge and skills on how to use their money effectively.

Area of operation

We currently have 6 branches in Agusan del Sur and Surigao del Sur serving about 8,000 clients. These two provinces belong to the 10 poorest provinces in the Philippines that’s why we chose to work here – extending development interventions where it is needed the most.

These two provinces are gifted with good weather, abundant natural resources — seas, forest, marshland and fertile land. Lack of infrastructure, low management skills, lack of employment opportunities and challenging market access lead to poverty.

Client profile

Most of our clients are low income women in rural areas who own microenterprises such as sari-sari store, ambulant vending, backyard gardening, farming, petty trading, carenderia etc. They are usually married with 3-4 children.

Our hope is that they would be able to have a small garden that could provide food security in the household and reduce purchases and reliance to imported vegetable products.

Housing needs

SEDPI hopes to provide decent housing at the most affordable level that’s why we partnered with PagIBIG’s socialized housing program. Our clients will access a loan from PagIBIG at PhP200,000 to PhP250,000 which will be paid over a 20 year period with ~PhP1,000 monthly payment.

It is therefore extremely important that the design would comply with HLURB standards for socialized housing which PagIBIG follows.

This eats up about 20% of their PhP5,000 average monthly income which represents a huge chunk of the household budget. That is why I cannot overemphasize enough the need for practical and functional housing at the least possible cost.

SEDPI workforce

The land that we purchased is along the highway and part of ot will be used as our office cum staff house aside from the socialized housing for our clients. Our employees also come from low income households. We provide them with housing so that they need not spend for rent.

We need the following office spaces to carry out our duties and functions:

• 40 square meter open space area which serves multiple functions – work space and meeting area for employees and clients. Our office furniture are white plastic monoblocs that could be configured according to our activity for the day. In this area, there should be a provision for an open shelf where magazine boxes could be kept for our filing. There should also be a space where we could place our steel cabinet with vault, cabinet for office supplies and unused forms. There should also be space for a computer station.
• Three bedrooms which is 20 square meter each. Each bedroom will have two bunk beds to accommodate 4 persons. There should also be a provision for cabinet for four persons inside the room where our employees could keep their personal belongings.
• Small functional kitchen at 5 square meters would suffice
• 2 toilet and bath measuring 4 square meters

Optimal use of the lot

Right now, I am thinking of having the lot developed as mixed use. I think 5 quadruplex socialzed housing could fit in the lot with our office space floor area of 120 square meters.

Another option is also to maximize the use of the wide frontage to build commercial stalls that we could rent out beside our office space. In this case, only three quadruplex socialized housing will be built at the back portion of the lot.

I hope the information above will help you in your task. Below are pictures and videos of our community.

Thank you!

Sincerely,

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