Goal:
16 homes.
Result — 19.
Akid who grew up in poverty and ended up living on the streets went back and built homes for families living the way he once did. That’s the whole sentence. Everything else on this page is footnotes.
— What this was. Not what the brochure said.
Nothing → everything → nothing needed.
I became a father at 19. Came from a broken home. No money, no roadmap, no soft landing. The version of me at 22 was either going to build something or be buried by something — and both options were on the table for a few years.
I built something. Real estate, mostly. My twenties were a long, ugly grind that eventually started producing — deals, revenue, a company, a team. I made my first million in business at 30. By 31, the numbers were big enough to be confusing.
And then I went very quiet. Stopped posting. Started asking what any of it was actually for.
Project 1616 was the answer to that question — at least the first answer.
The goal
Sixteen homes. That’s where the name comes from. Sixteen families in extreme poverty in El Salvador, each getting a concrete pad, two bedrooms, steel beams anchored against earthquakes, a front and back door, and lockable windows. $3,800 a home, built through Shelter Helps, a registered Canadian charity that runs the build infrastructure on the ground.
I picked the number, said it out loud, put up a website, and started asking.
What actually happened
We raised ~$120,000 — enough to cover the homes plus team travel and lodging. The build itself was three days of twelve-hour shifts. Nineteen homes — three more than the goal. I stayed in El Salvador for almost three weeks. December 2024.
You should know what that looks like, because it’s not what you think. It’s not a photo op. It’s twelve-hour days in 40-degree jungle heat, lifting steel into place, hauling block, watching kids run circles around you while their parents move faster than you do because they’ve done this kind of work their whole lives. Then you eat together. Then you sleep four hours. Then you do it again.
What I came back with
I didn’t come back inspired. I came back questioning everything. The math on the trip is brutal — $3,800 a home. The price of a fridge in Calgary buys a family in El Salvador a concrete house with locks on the doors. That ratio doesn’t leave the body once you’ve seen it.
It’s also the cleanest thing I’ve ever done with money. No tax loophole. No content angle. No pitch deck. Just: here’s what’s needed, here’s what it costs, do it. I think about it almost every week.
Shelter Helps is a registered Canadian charity that operates on the ground in El Salvador, sourcing materials, coordinating with families, and running the build crews. Tax-deductible. shelterhelps.ca
I didn’t post about it while it was happening.
The homes are still there.
That’s the only part that matters.