When Disaster Strikes, Habitat Strikes Back

Habitat for Humanity understands that supporting families affected by disasters and conflicts requires immediate, comprehensive and collaborative actions. As one of the world’s largest builders of decent, safe and affordable housing, Habitat recognizes the need to develop long-term shelter and housing solutions for disaster-affected families and to help communities protect themselves against future threats in disaster-prone areas.

Disaster: Destroying a community’s foundation
A disaster is a serious disruption of a community’s basic functioning, resulting in losses that exceed the community’s ability to cope without help. It is a situation in which the means of a community to sustain life with dignity have failed, requiring external assistance to overcome. Though most often caused by nature, disasters can be human-made too. Wars and civil disturbances can just as easily destroy homelands and displace people, making intervention an urgent need throughout the world.

Habitat for Humanity is committed to helping communities recover and regain the capacity to rebuild their lives and livelihoods.

In the wake of a disaster
In order to fulfill the needs created by a disaster and help communities recover, Habitat for Humanity will:

• Assess its response options to the disaster as quickly as possible.
• Collaborate with community leaders, local government, humanitarian aid organizations, and Habitat national offices and affiliates by offering technical and organizational expertise in shelter and housing construction.
• Facilitate community involvement and support for response activities.
• Begin construction of shelter and housing solutions as soon as possible.
• Implement programs for reducing risk through preparedness and mitigation activities.
• Introduce schemes for skill acquisition and income generation using Habitat Resource Centers as a focal point to produce construction materials, offer training in construction, and introduce appropriate shelter and housing technologies.

Disaster strikes in an instant, but shelter and housing needs remain for months and years
Habitat for Humanity recognizes that long after humanitarian aid organizations have completed their relief work, the need for quality shelter and housing still remains. Habitat meets the challenge of disasters and conflicts worldwide using a number of integrated approaches that revolve around our core competencies of shelter and housing solutions. These methodologies geared toward sustainable development include:

Disaster Recovery Initiatives

These include shelter and housing solutions with an emphasis on long-term sustainable development for families whose lives have been affected by disasters or conflicts. They are accomplished by working through established Habitat affiliates and national organizations or other like-minded reputable partners. The initiatives focus on a wide array of solutions including transitional shelter, new housing, repairs and reconstruction, and provision of construction materials and technical expertise. The implementation of these initiatives requires intensive participation of affected families in different processes (land preparation, construction activities, skills training, etc). In addition, a subsidy is usually included in disaster recovery in recognition of the impact that a disaster has on the livelihood of the affected community.

Disaster Corps Program
The Disaster Corps program provides human resources to support Habitat disaster response activities. It ensures available personnel to assist with projects, programs and initiatives through the training and development of a consortium of consultants, specialists, Habitat staffers, disaster response volunteers and teams to assist Habitat affiliates and national organizations in various capacities.

Disaster Mitigation and Preparedness Initiatives
Through the disaster mitigation and preparedness initiative, Habitat for Humanity assists affiliates and partners with tools to reduce the impact of disasters on homeowners and communities while empowering local Habitat partners to be prepared for disasters. Using educational materials and training, Habitat works with affiliates and partners to build local capacity in disaster response, with particular emphasis on disaster-prone geographical locations.