Homeless International a .UK based charity with an annual budget £20 million announced today they were re-branding from Homeless-International.org to Reall.xyz
The NGO has been around since 1989 “focusing on urban poverty issues (including slums and social housing) in the developing world”
The charity has its own Wikipedia.org page
Here is some info from the press release:
“Since 2010, our annual budget to accelerate sustainable housing development in Africa and Asia has increased tenfold to approximately £20 million.
With this, we have been able to increase the number of households helped from 1,000 in 2010 to 20,000 so far this year. We now operate in 20 countries through 26 entrepreneurial and inspiring community organisations.
As our funding has grown, so too have our aspirations. We want to make a bigger and lasting impact on a problem that affects one in seven people alive today. To do that, we are making some changes – and we have started with our name.
‘Homeless International’ has served us well, but it no longer adequately reflected the enterprising work we do.
As we reach out to an ever-expanding number of the urban poor across the world, it is time for us to establish an identity that encapsulates the solutions we aim to provide and not just the problems we aim to tackle.
Reall – or Real Equity for All – is not just a new name. Reall represents a new way of looking at how our organisation operates, how we work and what we do.
What will Reall help us to do?
… Create greater scale
One self-sustaining enterprise can finance and build up to 5,000 houses per year. That’s a fantastic figure, but it’s still only a start. More than 200,000 people arrive in cities every day and more than 90% of them are forced to settle in slums. To address the burgeoning demand for affordable, safe, long-term housing, there is an urgent need for thousands of such enterprises.
The Reall social franchise model will give us this scale and allows us to seed networks of community organisations in dozens of cities worldwide. We will be in the forefront of developing urban slum housing enterprises.
… Build more enterprises, not just houses
Our goal is to establish a global network of independent, self-financing community development enterprises that are capable of serving existing slum communities. As Reall becomes an established, recognised and respected approach, Reall community organisations will have a louder voice to gain access to:
– Local governments, to become part of the institutional fabric of a city and have a say in future housing policy and practice
– Local financial institutions, to benefit from affordable, sustainable sources of working capital and banking services
– The network of institutional investors that Reall will develop across the world to provide affordable long-term, recoverable debt or equity investments
… Deliver development, not just aid
By leveraging the Reall network, we will be better able to empower our partners to build sustainable enterprises – capable of financing and maintaining affordable housing over the long term – thanks to a worldwide transfer of skills, knowledge, education and shared experiences.
… Attract investment
Looking forward, Reall aims to create a marketplace in which housing for the urban poor is an investment class. As the network of Reall enterprises gains traction and motivates our partners to collaborate with one another, it will generate a favourable investment climate. Ultimately the intention is to gain access to commercial sources of finance that, by generating surpluses, profits and returns for funders, will prove a lasting source of funding for Reall to deliver development.
… Engender confidence among the world’s urban poor communities
Over the next year, the organisations we support will be invited to adopt the Reall brand as a mark of assurance or a stamp of quality and integrity that demonstrates our network’s shared values, standards and systems. Every partner organisation, whatever its size or location, has a chance to become a partner in a global network.
What’s next?
On Wednesday 17 September 2014, our name officially changed to Reall.
We believe Reall will have the most meaningful, long-term and far-reaching impact on slums to have ever been initiated and we are excited and invigorated at the opportunities ahead of us.
