The Philippines Experience by Marcia Yogore
Marcia presented a slideshow on the different types of houses built in the Philippines, and also their use of innovative new technologies such as Concrete Interlocking Blocks, etc.
To raise funds, HfH Philippines has to “sell” tangible products. Their core competency is in building. They must show ideas in a form which can be easily grasped and understood. For example, medium rise buildings are an efficient way to maximise land use. Make it easy for donors to see what their money will help to buy. Enter alliances with other sectors and other NGOs to build communities. Get corporations to provide money, materials and even labour.
The big corporation Ayala Land encouraged their employees to donate hours for building with Habitat. ING Bank adopted an entire community, sponsoring 200 houses and a learning centre. Every Christmas their people come to visit this community which they helped build. These are examples of how corporations can assist.
Noel Leeming – The Real Deal, by Lynley Twyman
HfH in New Zealand have had commercial partners for a long time, such as paint suppliers, etc. But these are “one way” sponsorship deals. They came to realise they needed to form partnerships. To grow, the NZ office needed to let the public know what Habitat is all about.
Noel Leeming is a major home appliance retail store. Their vision to create the ideal family home includes to connect their staff with the local communities. NL’s staff who volunteer are paid to do so, but many have come back on weekends because they have made a personal connection with HfH’s mission to eradicate poverty housing.
“To help HfH build a big house, help us build a little house” campaign involved building Wendy Houses in 56 NL stores simultaneously with children’s help. These playhouses were then auctioned off for charity.
Launching Community Card in Indonesia by Andrew Hidayat
In a synergistic deal with Krispy Kreme doughnuts, a Habitat video clip will be played in their outlets all day long. A famous jazz musician also wrote a song for HfH, and will sing it with a children’s choir.
The Community Card has 10 coupons and costs USD5. Effectively, customers who buy this card will get 10 half-price discounts at Krispy Kreme. There are also weekly events, with students enlisted to distribute HfH flyers, and monthly mini-concerts.
The Community Card is issued by MAP, a very big group which works with Starbucks, etc. HfH had previously tried to contact MAP, without success. This contact was finally made through the assistant GM of Krispy Kreme, from the same church as one of the HfH board members.
John’s Brigade Campaign by Joseph Scaria
HfH India had a target to reach 1 million volunteers. Through an old kindergarten friend, contact was made with celebrity John Abraham, who agreed to make a PSA which proved to be very popular. This spun off into screenings at cinemas, on TV, and an web-tv site called Zapak. Promotions came in with Wrangler t-shirts, Hallmark cards, Citibank ATM, and others.
After John Abraham cut his trademark long hair, he requested a ‘new look’ campaign. Tapping into the reality TV show/ Idol vibe, MTV is now inviting the Indian youth to come up with ideas on how to direct John in the new PSA.
The last time, the media coverage was free. Now HfH are looking at getting corporate sponsors to pay for the media blitz. HfH are lucky to get him because John has a very clean image.
Youth Build by Donald Taylor
The initial programme was to match 100 Indian volunteers to 100 Korean volunteers in an Under No Roof event, but this plan was scrapped when the event was moved from Orissa for security reasons. It was then changed to a Youth Build for a slum resettlement in New Delhi.
86 students from Korea and other HfH members from Mumbai, Chennai, etc, built 9 houses in 5 days.
The volunteers deeply experienced the transformation, helping demolish the squatter shacks. The materials like bamboo were reused and recycled.
Each site had up to 12 volunteers, an English speaking HfH personnel, translators, local labourers, etc.
The lessons learnt: if it is meant to be an event, it should be organised as one from the beginning; 90 people are not the same as a GV team; there needs to be utmost transparency in planning; with proper work delegation; and mutually agreed upon objectives with the stakeholders.
Those were a few highlights of the afternoon session. We then adjourned to a nice dinner, during which moving tributes were paid to one of the prime movers of the current workshop, Usha Menon, who will be leaving Habitat as a full-timer (although she will continue to help us as a volunteer Board member in Singapore).