A Happy new year to all.
Thank you for your heart-warming support last year.
Each of your kind and active involvement is highly appreciated.
In its first 24 years, Habitat for Humanity built 100,000 houses with people in need of decent, affordable shelter. In only nine years since then, another 250,000 houses were built. Today, more than 1.75 million people are now living in Habitat homes.
Today 1.6 billion people live in inadequate shelter around the world ? one billion of those live in slums ? with about 60 per cent of them calling Asia-Pacific their home. Moreover, there are frequent disasters, such as Philippines Typhoon and Indonesia Earthquake, which happened last September, in the Asia-Pacific so the needs are still great. These are alarming figures that demand we heed the call for Habitat’s work to move up to another level.
Habitat for Humanity Japan sent about 800 volunteers to the Asia-Pacific countries and also focused on the projects in Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Thailand last year. We are trying to make it more effectively to support for these projects and also make awareness about our activity in Japan in order to work with as many people as possible.
We look forward to your active involvement and continuous support to us in 2010!
Wish everyone’s health and happiness for this new year.
Habitat for Humanity Japan team