Barrio Mío — Guatemala's Pilot-Test-Replicate Model for Disaster-Resilient Neighbourhood Upgrading

Barrio Mío is a neighbourhood-scale disaster-risk-reduction and upgrading project run by PCI (now Global Communities) with the Municipality of Mixco, in the Guatemala City metropolitan area, under a $2 million cooperative agreement with USAID's Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA). It combines WASH infrastructure, drainage, retaining walls, evacuation routes and housing reinforcement in informal settlements exposed to landslide and flood risk.

The project follows an explicit 'pilot, test, improve, replicate' methodology aimed at reducing disaster risk in high-risk informal settlements and enabling government-led replication of successful interventions.

The project was piloted in two informal neighbourhoods of Mixco between 2012 and 2015, directly reaching more than 3,600 households (about 18,500 people) with WASH, drainage, retaining-wall, evacuation-route and housing-reinforcement works.

The Municipality of Mixco subsequently replicated the model in 15 further communities using its own resources, and the approach informed wider national-level scale-up discussions, corroborated by Guatemala's national disaster-coordination agency CONRED and independent press coverage in Prensa Libre.

Available sources verify reach (households benefited) and replication (15 additional communities) but do not provide quantified before/after risk-reduction outcomes such as flood incidents avoided or measured vulnerability reduction — the evidence base is strong on scale and government uptake, thinner on measured impact.