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Habitat for Humanity International |
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Habitat for Humanity International was founded in 1976 as a nonprofit, ecumenical Christian housing ministry. Strong name recognition and a demonstrated capacity to raise funds from the public led to tremendous growth. Today Habitat operates in more than 80 countries, has about 2,400 registered affiliates, and has built about 350,000 houses worldwide, helping 1.5 million people obtain simple, decent and affordable shelter.
Through donations of volunteer labor, money and materials, and with the cooperation of the future homeowner (partner) families, Habitat for Humanity builds and renovates homes in an inexpensive way. The homes are then sold to the partner families at no profit, financed with affordable loans. The homeowner's monthly mortgage payments, accompanied by the funds raised, go into a revolving fund that is used to build more houses.
Habitat for Humanity does not offer a give-away program. In addition to the low monthly mortgage payments, future homeowners invest an average of 1200 hours of labor - the so called sweat equity - into building their own home and the houses of others.
To learn more about urban poverty in Europe/Central Asia, visit http://www.habitat.org/eca/
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Habitat for Humanity Hungary |
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Habitat for Humanity Hungary was established in 1996. In that year former president of the United States Jimmy Carter, and his 500 volunteers, built ten homes within a week in Vác. Following this massive building effort, affiliates were founded in several communities around Hungary. To date, we have served 340 families at nine different locations. We also served 150 families with financial education and construction technical assistance.
Current projects:
Individual repairs: We help low-income families improve their homes by changing windows, installing insulation and other works, so that they can save energy and money.
Condominium repairs: We help low-income families/pensioners living in condominiums fix problems in common areas of the house to save energy and money.
Social rental unit renovations: The social rental units owned by municipalities are critical to the housing of the poorest in Hungary. With a small and deteriorating stock, our repair program for municipalities is vital to give shelter to very poor families.
Institutional renovations and extensions: We help social institutions (eg. homeless shelter, autistic home) to renovate and extend their buildings to provide space for more residents from vulnerable groups.
 
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