World Housing
Discovering Our Purpose
On a flight home in 2009, Sid Landolt and Peter Dupuis struck up a conversation with a stranger; a conversation that would change S&P’s destiny forever.
The stranger, who turned out to be Blake MyCoskie founder of TOMS Shoes, explained how his ‘one-for-one’ gifting model—buy a pair of TOMS and the company gifts a pair to a shoeless child—had not just transformed his company, but also the lives of millions of people.
Deeply moved by the story, Sid and Peter made a commitment to adapt the concept to real estate. The idea for World Housing was born.
World Housing: A Home For Everyone
Driven by the idea that everyone has the right to live in a secure home with a lockable door, no matter the circumstance, a handful of influential friends planted the seed capital that would initiate the growth of World Housing.
Ian Gillespie sponsored the movement through the sales of his first super-prime building, Vancouver House. Scott Neeson’s Cambodia Children’s Fund came on board as the program’s official Cambodian home building partner. Together, they played an instrumental role in transforming the lives of people living in Steung Meanchey, a notoriously tough landfill community in Phnom Penh.
Beginning in 2014, the Cambodian World Housing factory on the edge of the landfill has employed and trained more than 40 local garbage pickers. To date, World Housing has constructed and gifted homes to more than 4,000 people living in abject poverty, giving the surrounding community a real hope for a better future.
HOUSE THOUSANDS OF SLUM DWELLERS
World Housing continues to grow and establish itself within the most impoverished slums in Cambodia, Philippines, Mexico, Colombia and Haiti, while also developing an open system other organizations can use to provide adequate housing for the 1.2 billion people living in uninhabitable dwellings across the globe.
A social change model that’s having a positive impact everywhere, World Housing has been recognized by The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, The Vancouver Sun, The Huffington Post and numerous others as one of the leading social entrepreneurial innovations to solve the global slum housing problem.
Through unique business partnerships, genuine transparency, and a brand built around hope, World Housing is building a community of changemakers and housing people in need.
To become part of the movement, go to worldhousing.org