Student-led · Ateneo de Manila University
Across backgrounds and beyond the build, we come together for decent housing.
Who we are
We bring people, ideas, and resources together around a shared commitment to decent housing.
Operating since 2015, HFH BC is the Habitat for Humanity campus chapter at Ateneo de Manila University. We go beyond the build, holding different engagements alongside different partner communities, educating our members and wider community, advocating for housing as a matter of conscience and action, and hosting fundraising projects that sustain themselves.
Open to all higher education students, we pride ourselves on an inclusive, fun, dynamic, and fulfilling environment, with room for committed organizational involvement and flexible, voluntary participation whenever people are able.
Our approach
We build and rehabilitate houses in partnership with Habitat for Humanity affiliates and homeowners. We work alongside partner communities, on build sites and in the engagements with them, from construction to the different projects that help a community strengthen itself.
We educate our members, campus, and local community about the work and mission of Habitat for Humanity. We teach what Habitat does, and why housing poverty is a structural problem rather than a simple one.
We advocate on behalf of people in need of decent shelter and for an end to poverty housing and homelessness. We raise awareness and work to make these issues a matter of conscience and action rather than something people read past.
We raise funds for the work of Habitat for Humanity through fundraising projects that sustain themselves, putting what they raise behind the priorities partner communities set for their own development.
Why housing
Housing is a foundation for health, dignity, and opportunity.
The World Health Organization treats housing as a public-health issue. Its guidelines identify crowding, unsafe indoor temperatures, injury hazards, and inaccessible homes as risks, and find that improving housing can prevent disease, improve quality of life, reduce poverty, and support climate action. UN-Habitat likewise describes adequate housing as a foundation for health, education, dignity, safety, and social inclusion. [1][2]
In the Philippines, DHSUD reports around 3.7 million informal settler families nationwide. Its National Resettlement Policy Framework separately estimates that about 3 million people in Metro Manila, roughly one in four residents, live in informal settlements without secure tenure. The PSA’s 2020 Census found that 27.2% of occupied housing units had a floor area of less than 20 square metres, while the country recorded 105 households for every 100 occupied housing units. Together, these figures describe different dimensions of inadequate housing, and they are not additive. For HFH BC, this is why the work extends from construction to the partnerships, education, resources, and advocacy that help communities strengthen themselves. [3][4][5]
Sources
Our work
A few ways we bring people, resources, and shared action together around decent housing.
We work alongside partner communities on build sites, where construction is one part of a wider relationship shaped by shared priorities.
A campus ukay-ukay sale that turns shared resources into support for initiatives with partner communities.
A coastal engagement that brings members and community partners together to care for the places they share.
Stories
“Sampung taon. Iba’t ibang lider, iba’t ibang panahon. Ngunit hindi kayo tumigil sa pagtulong, hindi kayo napagod.”
Veronica Gianan, HOA Secretary of Pasig 1, reflects on a decade of partnership with Habitat for Humanity Blue Chapter.
Veronica Gianan · HOA Secretary, Pasig 1Our impact
Join the chapter, take part in an activity, partner with us, or follow the work as it unfolds.