New Zealanders Offered Life-Changing Week

HABITAT FOR HUMANITY NEW ZEALAND

For release: 6th April 2010

New Zealanders Offered Life-Changing Week Helping Others

Habitat for Humanity seeks volunteers for building project in Mongolia

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Adventurous New Zealanders are being offered a life-changing week, helping families in need to build homes beneath Mongolia's wide-open, blue, summer skies.

>From 28th June to 2nd July 2010, Habitat for Humanity is to bring together hundreds of volunteers from across the world to help local families build thirty houses in the capital, Ulaanbator.

"This is a great opportunity to spend time in a vast country that not many New Zealanders have visited and to do a great deal of good in the process.

"We expect this prospect to appeal to Kiwis, both as a nation of inveterate travellers and as people who like doing good in practical ways," says Habitat for Humanity New Zealand's Chief Executive, Pete North.

"You will get to know the local people, live and work amongst them and learn about their culture. In addition,you'll have the chance to make friends with other volunteers from many other parts of the world," he adds.

Known as 'Blue Sky Build 2010', the project will focus on assisting a community currently living in traditional tents. Families in such communities typically have to put up with overcrowded and unhygienic conditions, lacking water systems and connections to the city's central heating, despite the bitterly cold winters.

"Mongolia is a country with great potential but its transition to a market economy, after the fall of Communism, has not been without pain. Many Mongolians face low wages, unemployment and a lack of affordable homes. Two out of five Mongolians live in substandard housing," says Pete North.

"Thanks to both their own hard work and to Habitat's involvement, more than 1,500 Mongolian families have had their lives transformed by new housing.

"Blue Sky Build 2010 will help celebrate our tenth anniversary there and mark the start of what promises to be another decade of achievement."

It costs approximately NZ$4,000 to join Blue Sky Build 2010, with the price covering air fare, food and accommodation, as well as a contribution to the cost of the project. Volunteers need to be 18 years old or older.

To find out more about volunteering, please visit the Habitat New Zealand's website www.habitat.org.nz or telephone its freephone number 0800 442 248.

Habitat for Humanity is a non-denominational Christian not-for-profit organisation that helps more than 60,000 families across the globe into homes every year. The organisation aims to help build sustainable communities and eliminate poverty housing worldwide. Habitat New Zealand has helped more than 350 families into their own homes in New Zealand since its establishment here in 1992.

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