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TUT's Adventurers Club
January 2009's 'Gifts from the Universe' Project:
Habitat For Humanity International
Eliminating poverty housing and homelessness from the world and making decent shelter a matter of conscience and action.. One DOLLAR at a Time.
As part of our TUT's Adventurers Club mission, we have chosen Habitat For Humanity International as our adoptive organization for the month. To reach our collaborative goal of support for them, please donate a dollar or more now at the link right below. Happy Giving!
"To find out how much you've truly been blessed with in terms of love, time, energy, talent, joy, abundance, confidence, intelligence, wit, or any other quality, substance, or dispensation... give of them. Then you'll know what boundless really means." ~The Universe
Learn more about Habitat for Humanity International by reading below, watching the video on the left, and by visiting: www.habitat.org
Habitat invites people of all backgrounds, races and religions to build houses together in partnership with families in need.
Habitat has built more than 300,000 houses around the world, providing more than 1.5 million people in more than 3,000 communities with safe, decent, affordable shelter. HFHI was founded in 1976 by Millard Fuller along with his wife, Linda.
How does it work?
Through volunteer labor and donations of money and materials, Habitat builds and rehabilitates simple, decent houses with the help of the homeowner (partner) families. Habitat houses are sold to partner families at no profit and financed with affordable loans. The homeowners' monthly mortgage payments are used to build still more Habitat houses.
Why Habitat for Humanity is Needed?
A core issue for global poverty: The state of the world's housing.
The world is experiencing a global housing crisis. About 1.6 billion people live in substandard housing and 100 million are homeless, according to the United Nations. These people are increasingly urban residents, and every week more than a million people are born in, or move to, cities in the developing world. Today, a billion people -- 32 percent of the global urban population -- live in urban slums. If no serious action is taken, the United Nations reports that the number of slum dwellers worldwide will increase over the next 30 years to nearly 2 billion.
Importance of clean, decent, and stable housing
Habitat for Humanity has shown that building homes does more than put a roof over someone's head. In clean, decent, stable housing:
- Families can provide stability for their children.
- A family's sense of dignity and pride grow.
- Health, physical safety, and security improve
- Educational and job prospects increase.
Through our own programs we have witnessed the transformational ability of good housing, and recent scholarly research confirms what Habitat for Humanity has known for so long.
Housing must become a priority.
If action to decrease poverty is to be successful, increasing the housing supply across the globe is essential. Adequate housing is vitally important to the health of the world's economies, communities, and populations, yet the percentage of people without access to decent, stable housing is rising. The United Nations projects that by the year 2030 an additional 3 billion people, about 40 percent of the world's population, will need access to housing. If we are to prevent such a dramatic escalation of the housing crisis, and if we are to succeed in the fight against poverty, we must support the expansion of housing both as policy and as practice.
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