Habitat For Humanity India Trust

Habitat for Humanity India minutely studies the needs of underprivileged communities and family needs within the community and focuses on building quality houses with locally sourced materials. The Trust ensures that its buildings conform to both the Government’s and its own quality control standards.

Homes built by the Trust provide that each person is allocated at least 3.5 meters of usable area or at least two rooms per home. It only uses materials which pass its specifications of quality and is built to withstand natural calamities in such areas. Special attention is paid to the construction of accessible sanitation facilities with proper drainage systems.

Beyond construction, the Trust also trains small institutions to provide micro-finance, equip homeowners with knowledge of repair and maintenance and property papers.

Aligning to the United Nations' sustainable development goal of providing clean water and sanitation and the Government of India’s Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, the Trust works to build accessible sanitation facilities in communities and schools.

This effort is intended to help protect the dignity of women and girls and improve community well-being through improved hygiene and sanitation. It goes through a selection process to identify schools that are in acute need of sanitation facilities, proceeds to implement construction by itself or through partners and provides technical assistance as required.

In addition to the construction of sanitary amenities, the Trust provides funds through its CSR activities to communities that want to construct their own facilities, drive change in behaviour against open defecation and is exploring the possibility of using access cards to track usage of such facilities.

The Trust is actively involved in disaster response missions due to its expertise in the construction space. It undertakes rehabilitation and repair of shelters and homes in areas prone to natural calamities, provides essentials in the form of kits to affected people, helps build temporary shelters for people to tide over immediate difficulties and rebuilding of destroyed homes and community facilities.

To reduce risk from disasters it promotes the construction of disaster-resistant homes and through a team of specialists trains communities in disaster response to act as first-level assistance in crisis situations.