From 2017 to 2021, Habitat for Humanity led a consortium of 14 partners from seven European countries (Bulgaria, Hungary, Ireland, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and the United Kingdom) to engage young people and Europeans citizens in support of the Sustainable Development Goals.
In Mexico, 53.3 million people do not have the financial means to buy or build decent housing, despite the right to housing being enshrined in the constitution. Habitat for Humanity’s Terwilliger Center for Innovation in Shelter and Holcim have announced a new partnership to provide low-income families with better access to affordable housing products, services and financing. The project will be implemented in Veracruz state, where a quarter of families lack adequate housing.
The high school in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, usually volunteers with Habitat for Humanity’s Global Village program. With the COVID-19 pandemic going on, there was no way they could travel to the build site. Many students know how important a decent home to protect against diseases. They decided to raise and donate funds to Habitat for home construction. In these difficult times, the school collected 16,000 USD to support Habitat programs in Lebanon and India.
Valbona Xhafa, regional manager at Fondi BESA, emphasizes the deep cultural value placed on homeownership in Albania: “We Albanians are very sensitive about our houses. We all want to [own] houses. That’s what it means to live well.”
This widespread desire for better living conditions drove Fondi BESA to introduce a new housing loan product in 2021, backed by an investment from MicroBuild. The initial rollout of this product faced challenges, as Alma notes: “We’d had the product for more than a year, but we were hardly disbursing any housing loans.”
In Shuto Orizari, a culturally rich municipality in North Macedonia, lives the Salievski family. This area is known for its vibrant Roma community, which has faced significant social and economic challenges over the years. The family consists of Senad Salievski, his wife Elvira, their three sons aged 9, 12, and 14, and their 4-year-old daughter. Despite the odds, Senad is determined to provide a better life for his family.
Housing microfinance “is all about being small scale, affordable and lending responsibly. And it is working,” writes Habitat’s Kevin Chetty for the online site Place.
Climate change affects all areas of our daily lives. Recent study published by The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which is the United Nations body for assessing the science related to climate change says that Climate change is already affecting every inhabited region across the world. Do our homes need to change or has the process already started? How can we save energy? This and much more in the first episode of season 2 of Home Sapiens Podcast with our speaker Besim Nebiu.