Danielle Husband
A church in Friendswood is giving people a firsthand experience of life in extreme poverty, thanks to a local family who spent two months creating a replica of a slum.
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Compassion City, the name of the project, started as an effort to show suburban youth what it’s like to live in other areas of the world.
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“We live in a very safe community, but this is not the real world,” Cindy Damman, the project’s creator, said in an interview with the Houston Chronicle.
We were recently privileged to host a reporter and photographer from the Houston Chronicle and walked them… https://t.co/KciCuZLl8h
— FriendswoodUMC (@FriendswoodUMC) August 11, 2017
Bringing some context to her family’s life, Damman created her replica slum outside Friendswood United Methodist Church.
To build the project, Damman and her fellow volunteers reportedly looked at photos online from around the world and researched how people in those areas live.
Along with every replica structure, visitors can read about how the people who used those structures in real life might spend their day-to-day.
The project recently moved to the church, and the facility is inviting the public to view the display over the next few weeks.
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Damman said she based her project on one presented by Compassion International, a humanitarian aid organization.
After seeing their presentation, she wanted to create one that was appropriate for younger children, as well as adolescents and adults.
You can visit Compassion City at 110 N. Friendswood Drive between 9:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m.
