Habitat for Humanity Team Due In Pakistan * * *Review Of Potential Partner’s Villages

October 28, 2005

LAHORE 28th October 2005: A team from Habitat for Humanity International is due in Pakistan next Tuesday to discuss reconstruction projects with two potential partner organizations following this month’s disastrous earthquake.

The team, which includes disaster-response specialists, engineers and others, will join Habitat for Humanity Pakistan locally-based representatives.

The five-day visit will take in Balakot and surrounding areas, about 250 km from the capital Islamabad. The team will also visit Kaghan valley and Jabori, Bagh district, and finally Muzzaffarabad and its surrounding areas.

They will visit specific villages identified by potential partners in each location.

Habitat envisages working to build partners’ technical and project management capacity to rebuild and repair homes, and to develop building centers to help put the millions of people displaced by the earthquake back into homes.

The response will probably encompass short-term efforts to provide families with accommodation before the snows set in the coming weeks.

Some 80,000 people are reported to have died and more than three million rendered homeless by the 8th October 7.6-magnitude quake. An estimated half a million homes were destroyed.

Habitat for Humanity expects to liaise with UN-HABITAT. UN-HABITAT is working to co-ordinate and implement early reconstruction and repairs of homes and communities so that the fewest number of families are required to leave their home areas for tented camps. A UN representative recently spoke of the Pakistan as the worst logistical nightmare the global organization has ever faced.