The second one is harder to explain than the first.
In April I went to Maneadero with The Impact MVMT Foundation and helped build a house for the Guzmán Ramos family. I wrote about it here, and most of that post is about being stunned — by the speed, by the family, by the fact that this is something a person can simply sign up to do.
Last weekend I went back. Same organization, same three-day format, a different lot and a different family. What I did not expect is that knowing what was coming made it land harder, not softer.
The first time, you spend the weekend slightly disoriented. The second time, you know exactly what Sunday afternoon is going to feel like from the moment you pull up to a bare slab on Friday morning, and you have to work all the way through it anyway.
The site on Friday morning. Graded dirt, a water tank, and a view of the hills.
Who this was for
Her name is Perla. She has three daughters — Layla, Ana, and Melissa, sixteen, twelve, and nine.
Impact builds for migrant families living in housing that is not really housing: tarps, scrap wood, whatever was available. The organization qualifies the family, secures the land, engineers the plan, and then brings in a group of volunteers who mostly do not know what they are doing and points them at it.
Perla’s daughters were there the whole time. Not watching from a distance — in it, handing things to people, climbing on the lumber, learning everybody’s name faster than the adults did.
The part I did not see coming
The girls from April came back.
The family whose house we built in Maneadero in the spring drove out to see us. They brought homemade treats and stories from their first four and a half months in the house. Nobody asked them to come. It is not part of the program. They just came.
If you want to understand what this organization actually does, it is not in the before-and-after photos. It is that a family who got their house in April spends a Saturday driving out to a stranger’s build site, with food, to see how the next one is going.
The girls from our April build in Maneadero, back on site for this one.
The weekend, in order
The schedule was not complicated. It was just relentless.
Friday. Cross the border, caravan south, unload. The slab was already poured and cured. We framed and decked the floor system, then started standing walls before the light went. First time I have ever used a framing hammer for eight straight hours, and my forearms filed a formal complaint.
Saturday. The long day. All four walls up and braced, roof framed and sheathed, roofing on, siding and trim. This is the day the pile of lumber becomes a recognizable building, and the mood on the site changes completely once it does.
Sunday. Interior. Drywall, mud, paint, final trim, cleanup. Then the handover, which I will get to.
Friday, before anything. About twenty-five volunteers and a bare slab.
What you actually do
I want to be honest about my contribution, because the temptation with a post like this is to imply I personally erected a structure. The real answer is more interesting than either extreme.
You do all of it. Not one job for three days — every part of the house. Framing, roof, windows, electrical, drywall, mudding, paint. The crew moves through the build together, so over a weekend you have your hands on nearly the whole thing, and there are experienced people at every station who have done this many times and who will tell you, kindly, that you are holding it wrong. In my case, often.
That is what I did not expect on my first trip and it is the thing I would tell anyone considering one. You are not handing tools to a professional and watching. You are building the house, badly at first, with someone patient standing next to you.
Framing on Friday, drywall on Sunday. Over three days you end up touching most of the house.
The other half of the weekend
Not everyone is on the site the whole time, and this is the part of the trip nobody tells you about beforehand.
Impact runs local outreach alongside the build. During the weekend, some volunteers break off to visit the orphanage or the elderly home while the rest keep working. You choose. Nobody makes it a test of commitment either way, and both groups come back to the site having had a completely different day.
It is also how the four programs stop being a list on a website and start being one weekend. The house is the visible thing. It is not the only thing happening.
How a family qualifies
This is what I think people get wrong about builds like this, and what I got wrong before April.
Families are not chosen at random, and they are not simply handed a house. There is a vetting process, and a central piece of it is a track record: the family has to have been making payments on their land, consistently, over time, before they are approved for a build. The donation meets people who have already been doing the hard part for years.
Perla’s family had put in that work. The land itself was gifted to them, which means they move into this house with nothing owed against it. That is the design, and it is worth saying plainly: not a handout, a head start on ground they had already earned.
What a build actually costs
Volunteers pay $350 for the weekend. A build runs upward of $30,000.
The gap between those two numbers is the entire model, and it is filled by people who mostly never see the house. Individuals donate money. Companies donate specific materials. Sunrun donated the solar panels for this house and installed them after we finished on Sunday, so Perla and her daughters have power from the first night. None of that is in the $350, and the $30,000 does not include the land.
So when I say the barrier to going is lower than you think, I should be precise about why. It is low because a lot of other people made it low.
The part I keep coming back to
Around three o’clock on Saturday I was standing on the north side with a drill in my hand, and I looked up and realized the thing had a roof.
Two days earlier it was dirt.
In my business, speed is a negotiation. We fight for a thirty-day close. We talk about rate locks and appraisal timelines and contingency periods, and all of it is real, and all of it matters to my clients. But none of it is physics. A house does not take forty-five days because a house takes forty-five days. It takes forty-five days because of financing and inspections and title and the eleven other parties who have to say yes.
Down there, the constraint was different: how many people showed up, and how long the sun stayed out.
Twenty-five people and a weekend. That is the whole equation, and there is no version of it where the answer is money alone.
Saturday afternoon, when it stopped being lumber.
Sunday
The handover happens at the end of the last day. Everyone stops working, washes off what they can, and gathers in front of the house.
I am not going to try to reproduce it. There was a prayer, there were speeches in two languages, and there was the moment the door opened. Perla went in first. Her daughters went in behind her and immediately started arguing about rooms, which is the most normal thing in the world and also the entire point.
They gave this back to us: a framed drawing of the house with all of them standing in front of it, and a note. A house is built with hands, it says, but a home is raised with hearts. I did not make it through reading it.
I have handed over a lot of keys. It is one of the best parts of my job and I do not take it lightly. This was not the same, and I am not going to pretend the two are equivalent by putting them in the same sentence and calling it a metaphor.
Sunday afternoon. Somebody had already put sunflowers by the door.
About The Impact MVMT Foundation
Impact is a 501(c)(3) founded by Denise Serrano and Maribel Hernandez, who between them bring more than a decade of home construction and community work in underserved areas. What started as their own charitable projects turned into an organization with a volunteer base and a build calendar.
The house builds get the photos, but they are one of four programs:
- Housing for migrant families. Building safe, permanent homes to replace makeshift structures. This is the program I went on — the September 2026 build, September 11 through 13, in Baja.
- Student sponsorships. Covering educational costs for low-income students at risk of dropping out, so that money is not the reason a kid stops going.
- Senior care. Supplies and companionship for facilities serving abandoned seniors — the population that receives the least attention and asks for the least.
- Orphanage support. Fundraising and drives for toys, supplies, and essentials for orphaned children.
The September build was underwritten in part by ProTech Jobs and EZ Bombs. Sign-ups and the donate page are both at theimpactmvmt.org/events.
Everybody, at the end of Day 2.
Going back
I am going on the next one. I would like to bring people with me.
If you are in Newport Beach, Costa Mesa, Huntington Beach, or anywhere else in Orange County and this sounds like something you would do, the barrier is lower than you think — and now you know why it is low. It is $350 for the weekend, the group leaves from San Diego about ninety minutes from Newport, and you do not need construction experience. You need a passport, a free weekend, and a tolerance for dust.
If a weekend in Baja is not realistic, funding one is. A build is materials plus labor, and the labor shows up for free. It is also why I put a portion of every commission I earn into this organization — that part is not new, and it is not going to stop.
Evenings at the house Baja Ed puts us up in: everyone talks through the day and what they are grateful for. It is one of the best parts of the trip and nobody tells you about it beforehand.
Questions I have already been asked
Do you need construction experience to volunteer on an Impact house build?
No. I had none on my first build in April. Volunteers work every part of the house over the weekend — framing, roof, windows, electrical, drywall, mudding, paint — and there are experienced people at each station teaching as they go. If you can follow instructions and take a correction without sulking, you are useful on day one.
How long does an Impact house build take?
Three days. The September 2026 build ran Friday, September 11 through Sunday, September 13. The slab is poured and cured before volunteers arrive; framing, roof, siding, interior finish, and the handover all happen across that weekend.
Where in Mexico are the builds?
Baja California, a few hours south of the San Diego border crossing. Most Orange County volunteers drive down together in a caravan on Friday morning and come back Sunday night.
What does it cost to participate?
$350 per person for the weekend, covering lodging, all meals from Friday lunch through Sunday breakfast, and transportation from the San Diego meeting point. That figure is heavily subsidized: a build itself runs upward of $30,000 in donated money and materials, and that is before the land. Volunteers get themselves to San Diego, about ninety minutes from Newport Beach.
How are families chosen for a build?
Families are vetted, not picked at random. A central criterion is a track record of making payments on their land consistently over time before they are approved. The build meets people who have already been doing the hard part for years.
What else does The Impact MVMT Foundation do besides house builds?
Three other programs: student sponsorships for low-income students at risk of dropping out, senior care for facilities serving abandoned seniors, and orphanage support drives for toys and essential supplies. Some of that happens during the build weekend itself — volunteers can break off to visit the orphanage or the elderly home while the rest keep building.
How can I join the next build?
Email me at [email protected]. I am putting together a group of Orange County volunteers for the next Baja build and will send the date, the packing list, and the sign-up link the moment it is announced. No obligation, and no, this will not put you on a real estate mailing list.
The drive home, somewhere in the line at the border.
Jade Larney is a residential real estate agent with Anvil Real Estate serving coastal Orange County — Newport Beach, Costa Mesa, Irvine, and Huntington Beach. The Impact MVMT Foundation is an independent 501(c)(3) and is not affiliated with Anvil Real Estate or SIDE, Inc. Photographs published with the family’s permission.
