Search results for - ‘poverty’

Established in 1981, the Tenderloin Neighbourhood Development Corporation (TNDC) serves San Francisco’s hardest-to-house populations, including many with histories of homelessness. TNDC creates and maintains affordable housing, promotes stabilisation and revitalisation of the neighbourhood, and offers essential support services for its residents. TNDC owns and operates 30 buildings, housing over 3,000 residents. The 990 Polk Street project was designed to provide affordable housing for 150 vulnerable older people; housing formerly homeless older people with mental health problems, together with low-income older persons. The programme is expected to be transferred and TNDC has already been collaborating with other local and national organisations.

The Calakmul Rural Housing Programme was initiated in 2004 by Échale a tu Casa, a social franchise programme developed by Ecoblock International. It aims to facilitate self-build processes in the Calakmul area of Campeche, by providing technical training and assistance as well as financial support to low-income rural families, and by facilitating collective organisation processes. Using Échale’s Adoblock building technology, the programme has supported the assisted self-build construction of 1,000 new homes as well as 1,610 home improvements, generating employment for 500 people. The approach is being scaled up via a social franchising model, whereby community leaders take on a supervisory role for self-build projects within a certain geographic region.

The Dajopen Waste Management (DWM) group is a community-based organisation based in the town of Kitale, Kenya. It aims at tackling the economic, social and environmental conditions of vulnerable communities through a community-based waste management strategy, including the collection of waste, the production of recycled items, and the training of other self-help groups and actors regarding alternative livelihood opportunities, waste management and organic farming. Since this project was first initiated in 2007, 95 per cent of the DWM members have changed their waste disposal method. More than 21,000 people have been trained in waste management and organic farming and eight community groups have been trained by DWM in producing a range of recycled products.

The MEDINA Project involves the participatory urban renewal of historic cities in Yemen, using heritage preservation as a starting point to address the needs of a living community and develop wider urban renewal processes, improvements in housing conditions and local economic development. Historic residential buildings are renovated and restored using locally-available materials and reviving traditional skills and construction techniques. Residents are involved throughout the process and engage with the local authorities in defining recommendations and strategies for the rehabilitation of their cities. Initiated in 2007 under a bilateral agreement between the Yemeni and German governments, the project began with the historic cities of Shibam and Zabid and is now being adapted and transferred to other cities across the country.

The Odisha Alliance is a partnership involving the NGO Urban Development Resource Centre (UDRC), the grassroots women’s organisation Mahila Milan, the Odisha/National Slum Dwellers’ Federation (O/NSDF) and the Society of Promotion of Area Resources Centre (Sparc) – in 225 settlements in five cities of the state of Odisha and in three cities in the state of West Bengal. The Alliance’s project benefits the bottom 30 per cent of the economic pyramid of city dwellers who live in informal settlements, focusing on the community-led development of model houses that are affordable and adapted to local needs, as a basis for negotiating with government actors. These models act as ‘precedents’, demonstrating that slum dwellers can be the agents of their own development, while providing solutions that can be scaled up. The initiative is ongoing with many schemes at different stages of development. Sixty model houses have been built and two government programmes are running, with 400 additional houses currently under construction.

The Hebron Rehabilitation Committee (HRC) is a semi-governmental organisation dedicated to the revitalisation of the Old City of Hebron. The HRC offices are located within the Old City, in an area which is currently under Israeli military control. The main components of the project include the securing of decent housing, infrastructure and services, the stimulation of economic activity, and the provision of legal assistance to protect the residents' rights. As a result of the programme, several thousand new residents have moved into the Old City. Economic conditions are improving and the social fabric of the area has been strengthened by social integration awareness and community participation.

Since 2006, Actions Solidaires de Soutien aux Organisations et d'Appui aux Libertés (Solidarity Actions of Support to Organisations Promoting Freedom – ASSOAL ) has been working with the grassroots network Réseau National des Habitants du Cameroun (National Network of the Inhabitants of Cameroon - RNHC) to develop new ways to improve access to affordable housing, and to advocate for their application, which culminated in the formulation of propositions for nation-wide policies. The issues addressed include: access to property ownership; rental housing; neighbourhood improvement, through inclusive and democratic processes. ASSOAL and the RNHC started a series of pilot interventions to demonstrate the validity of the new approaches such as participatory budgeting and housing cooperatives funded by a revolving fund. To support these various initiatives, ASSOAL runs dissemination and knowledge-sharing activities, as well as building the capacity of various actors.

A project led by FUNDASAL (the Salvadoran Foundation for Development and Low-cost Housing) to improve health and housing standards in the deprived rural settlements of canton El Pinalito in county Santa Ana, where the risk from disasters caused by natural phenomena such as earthquakes is high and services and infrastructure are poor. Supported by a wide partnership of organisations, the project has helped to significantly reduce the incidence of Chagas disease and other illnesses related to the poor condition of the habitat and has improved the durability of housing. Chagas disease is a tropical parasitic disease spread by insects that live in cracks and gaps found in poor quality housing, it is endemic to South and Central America. The objective of FUNDASAL and partners is to achieve a transferable model of intervention which will not require external funding, so the project embeds knowledge within the local communities and enables the use of locally sourced building materials. The inclusion and training of local households and support groups is integral to this project.

The Roma are among the most vulnerable communities in Europe with a long history of persecution and discrimination perpetrated against them. Most live in segregated areas in poor quality and unhealthy housing. The project seeks to improve housing conditions and better integrate Roma people within wider society, including lobbying for equal access to public services. It has upgraded houses, improved sanitation, helped to improve school attendance, learning and helped people into work. The project’s ‘Dweller-driven Upgrading of Roma Settlements Model’ is now being successfully scaled up across Serbia.

848,000 houses were destroyed and 9.7 million people affected by severe floods in western Pakistan in 2011. This project developed and provided support to build over 20,000 flood resistant houses by the most vulnerable families based on local and traditional building designs. The houses were built using local labour and construction skills. Water resistant and lighter weight materials, such as lime and bamboo were introduced, creating huge savings in cost and embodied carbon over standard reconstruction approaches.

CLIFF starts from the philosophy that the poor are worthy of investment. Instead of giving one-off grants, CLIFF helps establish organisations in Asia and Africa with the capacity to provide slum dwellers with access to affordable housing finance. This approach not only facilitates the construction of affordable homes and neighbourhoods, it also generates enough financial return to allow the organisations it funds to achieve financial sustainability. In Nepal, this approach has enabled CLIFF investment to act as venture capital, proving the viability of projects that then achieve investment from established banks and lenders. Currently operating in fourteen countries, CLIFF has supported more than 70 housing and infrastructure projects in Asia and Africa between 2010 and 2014.

A community land trust is helping transform an informal settlement around a polluted and flood prone river channel into a sustainable community. It provides a new model for improving informal settlements in cities without them then becoming unaffordable for the original residents.

Project Description Passiv Solar Verandas are wood-framed structures built against the south-facing wall of a house. The project installs them in the highland region of Afghanistan where winter temperatures are cold and access to fuel is expensive and difficult. They act like a greenhouse using the sun’s warmth to heat the air. The warm air […]

Project Description ‘More than Housing’ is a large housing cooperative development that seeks to anticipate the future needs of its community and design buildings and ways of living that meet them. The building is designed to use as little energy as possible but it also promotes sustainable lifestyles with low car use and low heating […]

Project Description Since the hurricanes of September 2013, Cooperación Comunitaria has been working in the Montaña de Guerrero region in Mexico. The Reconstruction of Habitat project was implemented first in the community of Obispo, in the Municipality of Malinaltepec, after assessing the magnitude of the problems caused by hurricanes and is designed to enable replication […]

Project Description Following the prolonged civil war in Sri Lanka from 1983 to 2009, the Government of India took the decision to provide humanitarian and financial support to the Government and people of Sri Lanka to help them recover from the trauma of war. In total, the Government of India is supporting a number of […]

Project Description Through this eco-sanitation project, the Umande Trust seeks to involve marginalised communities living in urban informal settlements in accessing basic services through community-led provision of bio-centres. The Trust facilitates community participation and provides training and support to enable informal settlers to lead on the planning, design and management of the facilities. This community […]

Descripción del Proyecto El programa ayuda a las personas de comunidades de bajos recursos a convertirse en propietarios, en el distrito de Anantapur y zonas aledañas del estado de Andhra Pradesh. Los grupos principales apoyados por el programa son miembros de las castas Dalit (este término se refiere a las castas más bajas en el […]

Project Description The project seeks to reduce the incidence of malaria by implementing home improvements that reduce the number of mosquitos entering people’s homes. The project is based in Minkoameyos, one of the poorest informal settlements in Cameroon’s capital city Yaoundé where 80% of children were found to have the disease. There have been significant […]

Project Description Many historic town and city centres in El Salvador have suffered years of neglect and a lack of investment. Housing within these areas is often in disrepair, lacks basic services and puts residents at risk of eviction and poor health. Through a programme of training, funding and collaboration, a network of organisations including […]

Description du projet Le projet d’efficacité énergétique résidentielle pour les ménages à bas revenus (REELIH) concerne le transfert d’une approche éprouvée pour améliorer la vie de certaines personnes grâce à l’amélioration des bâtiments, qui a été introduite en 2009 par Habitat for Humanity en Macédoine. L’objectif du projet est de lutter contre la pauvreté et […]

The world is in the grip of a refugee crisis. Millions of people have fled conflict or persecution in their homelands in the hope of finding safety abroad. In the year ending June 2018, Britain received 27,044 asylum applications – less than 4 per cent of all asylum claims made in the EU during that […]

Velokhaya is a special place for the residents of Khayelitsha. The cycling school is a refuge for hundreds of disadvantaged children, where they can ride bikes, learn, play, and escape from the harsh realities of life in the township on the outskirts of Cape Town, South Africa. Velokhaya is easy to spot among the vast […]

When Spain’s housing bubble ‘burst’ following the 2008 global financial crisis, thousands of families lost their homes to repossession. With homeownership now out of reach for many, pressure on the rental market has increased exponentially, resulting in year after year of soaring rents and unstable tenancies. In the face of this growing housing crisis, a […]

In September 2017, Mexico was shaken by two powerful earthquakes. The first occurred on 7 September in the Pacific Ocean, close to south-western states of Oaxaca and Chiapas and was followed just 12 days later by an independent earthquake (not an aftershock) near the metropolis of Puebla and only 120 km away from Mexico City. […]