Adowa K. Buahene - Habitat for Humanity
Welcome to Adowa from Habitat For Humanity. Adowa has had 30 years association with Rotary; she started in High School. She received a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship while at Dalhousie University and spent a year in France. A Rotary Scholarship is much more than an opportunity to study abroad, it’s a chance to explore, reflect critically and arrive at decisions on how to best be of service to oneself, the community and your country. Adowa has deep appreciation for Rotary for giving her this amazing opportunity.
The Vision of Habitat is for everyone to have a safe and decent place to live. How do they continue to build communities that are accessible for all people? At Habitat it’s all about families. Habitat is a land developer, a builder, a volunteer services (there are 8,800 per year who help out). They are a financial lender, they hold mortgages that families have and they are a retailer with twelve stores in the GTA.
To qualify for housing, you have to be able to pay your mortgage, which is capped at 30%. It’s a fixed 20- year mortgage, zero interest. They use an equity sharing formula at sale or end of term. They also offer a homeownership preparation workshop.
The application process includes a good credit rating, application goes to a committee and it then becomes a selection process. They have to sell at fair market value.
How does Habitat make it work? They receive cash donations, product and services donations, and volunteer labour and there are partnerships of Government, community, corporate and developer. .
What is the impact? People donated 173,000 volunteer hours to Habitat and for every $1.00 invested, there is a social return investment of $4.00. Family income rises and people start to focus on their career when they know their children are safe and that Habitat is creating a society where families can survive and thrive.
Habitat believes in helping to build strong communities, and helping people to be good human beings.
COIN SHOW
A very successful Coin Show with 181 people in attendance. Over $3,000 was made and Willard thanked all the volunteers who were instrumental in helping to make this a success.