Help 15 Million People in Slums Gain Safe Housing

This past year, Habitat for Humanity’s global Home Equals Campaign has made great accomplishments in advocating and providing safe and stable housing for our global communities. We are approaching the one-year mark of the launch of Home Equals. Since the launch, we have seen momentum for change.

Habitat for Humanity and partners have advocated for and seen the successful adoption of 45 local or national policies and unlocked over $63 million of government resources, which has the potential to benefit over 3 million people.

Habitat for Humanity and a research partner, the International Institute for Environment and Development, or IIED, released an in-depth, data-driven report titled Improving Housing in Informal Settlements: Assessing the Impacts in Human Developmentto help launch our Home Equals campaign. Among the findings: GDP and income per capita would increase by as much as 10.5% in some countries if housing in informal settlements were upgraded at a massive scale, and as many as 41.6 million additional children could be enrolled in school.

In November, Habitat for Humanity organized a regional advocacy capacity building workshop with colleagues from eight countries. The workshop, a part of a six-month long advocacy capacity building initiative to grow impact, offered an opportunity to deepen national and local advocacy strategies to achieve greater change and improve housing in informal settlements.

Celebrating our progress on the ground:

In Malawi, as climate change continues to impact the most vulnerable countries, Habitat for Humanity contributed valuable insights during the Africa Regional Conference on Loss and Damage. This event aimed to position African countries as leaders in the governance of the loss and damage fund, a financial mechanism to address the irreversible negative consequences arising from climate change. Habitat for Humanity shared key policy priorities at the conference including adaptation for the most vulnerable, affordable mitigation strategies and urban settlement resilience.

In Macedonia, Habitat for Humanity is working with Roma communities, the largest ethnic minority in Europe, to advocate for more equitable and inclusive policies that emphasize the importance of sustainable urban development. Habitat for Humanity is working to improve the quality of life of Roma who have traditionally been excluded from larger society. Agreements have been signed with two municipalities where tens of thousands of Roma live, local leadership groups have been formed to ensure community voices are heard, and a resource center that provides information on housing, basic services, legal procedures and energy efficiency has been established.

This past November, in Cambodia, Habitat for Humanity organized a workshop empowering actors in the housing ecosystem to collaborate under the umbrella of the Cambodian government’s General Department of Housing. Stakeholders from the Ministry of Land Management, Urban Planning and Construction, provincial authorities, local NGOs and U.N. agencies worked together to map out future priorities and strategic areas for collaboration to promote low-cost and affordable housing, including for those living in informal settlements