Habitat for Humanity

Since the founding in 1976, Habitat for Humanity has become a global leader in addressing substandard housing by helping more than 1,000 000 people of all races, faiths and backgrounds to have a simple, decent place to live. BBIS has been part of this global effort to improve the standard of living for those less fortunate than ourselves.

The Habitat for Humanity Global Village Programme is in its third year at BBIS. In the first two years our teams went to Veles in Macedonia to work on four sets of two story units containing six units in each. These are now complete and the local families who have worked along side the volunteers and taken a small low interest loan have moved in.

To give some indication how much of an affect the BBIS teams have on the lives of others consider the cost of a single unit €36,000. In two years BBIS has donated €12,000 and contributed about 700 hours of labour, quite significant.

The BBIS Habitat team has expanded. We now have a large group of volunteers who help out during the year with fundraising and about half of this team are able to give up a week of their summer to go dig, carry bricks, hammer or do whatever is required. Each person in the group is asked to take responsibility for coordinating a fundraising event during the year. The whole programme relies on team work and everybody developing their sense of responsibility for the project.

In the first week of the summer holidays of 2012, we are travelling to Romania to Balesti just outside Bucharest.