This Christmas, Let’s Open the Door to Lasting Change

Across the Pacific, communities are facing growing housing challenges, making safe, resilient homes more important than ever.

Many people continue to live without safe and adequate shelter, reliable access to water, or secure places where they can gather when disasters strike.

Habitat for Humanity New Zealand works alongside communities as they identify their most urgent housing and shelter needs, develop practical plans, and lead solutions that can make their homes and communities safer.

Through locally led shelter programmes, Build Back Safer training, vocational learning, and water, sanitation and hygiene initiatives, people gain skills they can use in their own homes, share with others, and turn into new opportunities.

Over the past five years, Habitat and local partners have delivered 49 locally led shelter trainings across Samoa, Fiji and Tonga. Communities have used the knowledge gained through these programmes to repair homes, construct new buildings, improve access to water, and strengthen their resilience for the future.

Behind every training session is a story of people turning knowledge into action.

Support today

What Lasting Change Looks Like

🤝 Communities identify what they need

🔨 Local people develop practical skills

🏠 Communities put those skills into action

🌱 Knowledge and opportunities remain for the future

One new skill can help strengthen an entire community.

Lasting change looks different in every community. Sometimes it’s a safe place for everyone to shelter when a storm comes. Sometimes it’s a new home for a family who needs it most. What stays the same is that communities decide what matters, and local hands build it.

In Fausaga, Samoa, flooding puts homes and families at risk. As the community considered what would help make the village safer, one priority became clear: a secure place where people could shelter during disasters.

Community member Filivaaileo’o Toleafoa had completed Habitat’s Build Back Safer and Basic Home Plumbing training, gaining practical knowledge in areas such as cyclone strapping and safer construction.

When plans were made for a new evacuation shelter, Filivaaileo’o was selected as the lead builder. He was able to draw on his training while helping turn the community’s plans into a safer space for everyone.

“We finally have an evacuation shelter for our village, especially for those whose homes are affected,” says Filivaaileo’o.

The new shelter gives people whose homes are affected by flooding or severe weather a safer place to go when disaster strikes. It also shows how knowledge gained by one person can be put into action for the benefit of a whole community.

Skills gained by one person can help strengthen an entire community.

For three years, Meliame, Filipo and their family of 12 lived in a temporary shelter in the coastal community of Patangata, Tonga.

Heavy rain regularly flooded the shelter, while strong winds battered its fragile structure. Through a community-led process, the family was identified as among those most in need of housing support.

Watch the video

With support from Habitat, local Build Back Safer graduates put their construction skills into practice and helped build a stronger, permanent home designed to reduce risks from natural hazards. A new water tank also provides the family with safer access to clean water.

The project brought together practical training, local knowledge, and community action. Skills developed through the programme were used not only to construct a house, but to create greater safety and security for a family facing severe weather.

Today, Meliame and her family have a permanent place to call home.

“I’m happy that my children now know there is a secure shelter to settle in when natural disasters occur,” says Meliame.

For the family, their new home means protection from the weather and greater peace of mind. For the wider community, the build is another example of local skills being used to create practical, lasting change.

For Solomone Waqa in Fiji, lasting change began with the opportunity to learn.

After participating in Build Back Safer, vocational, and Participatory Approach for Safe Shelter Awareness training, Solomone began using his new skills to improve his family’s home and take on paid construction work.

Previously, Solomone supported his family by growing yaqona (kava), a traditional Pacific crop, and by cutting timber into boards for construction.

With his new carpentry skills, he was able to expand the kind of work he could undertake.

He built a farmhouse in Vaturova, completing the project in two weeks. Because he could prepare and cut the timber himself, he was able to apply multiple skills throughout the build. He later constructed another house on Kia Island, completing the work in three weeks.

The training has also made a difference at home.

Solomone has repaired louvre window frames, built a sanitation facility for his household, and replaced the earthen floors of his home with concrete. These practical improvements have made the home safer and more comfortable for his wife and daughter.

Solomone says he feels relieved and proud that he can now carry out his own repairs and construction work.

His skills have created new ways to earn an income, strengthened his family’s home, and given him knowledge he can continue using into the future.

That is the power of practical training: one opportunity to learn can open many more doors.

Across the Pacific, communities already hold the knowledge of what matters most to them.

With your support, more people can access practical training, resources, and opportunities that help turn local priorities into safer homes, stronger livelihoods, improved water and sanitation, and secure community spaces.

This Christmas, your generosity can help communities build solutions that respond to today’s needs and continue creating opportunities for the future.

Built by communities. Made possible by you.

Donate today and help open the door to lasting change.