October 16, 2026: Community participation, secure housing rights and inclusive planning are essential to making homes safer from disasters, according to the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR), which has highlighted seven initiatives from Asia, Africa and South America to demonstrate how residents can help build more resilient homes and neighbourhoods.
Published ahead of the International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction on October 13, the examples support this year’s theme, “Resilience Starts at Home.” UNDRR emphasised that residents often understand local risks better than anyone else, including flood prone areas, overheating homes and evacuation challenges. However, women, young people, older adults, persons with disabilities and families living in informal settlements are frequently excluded from decisions about housing and disaster preparedness.
In the Philippines, a community savings initiative helped families living in flood prone informal settlements in Iloilo City relocate to safer homes. Following Typhoon Fengshen in 2008, which submerged about 80% of the city, the Iloilo chapter of the Homeless People’s Federation of the Philippines worked with the local government to provide secure brick houses on land purchased within the city, close to jobs, schools and health services.
Residents helped design and construct their homes, while community savings and low interest loans supported the process. More than 1,250 households were resettled, and the programme expanded alongside more than 560 collective savings groups with over 4,500 members. Representatives of urban poor communities were also appointed to city boards dealing with resettlement and disaster risk.
In Harare, Zimbabwe, secure land rights have influenced residents’ ability to invest in safer housing. A study of three informal settlements found that residents in Dzivarasekwa Extension, where land tenure is secure, worked with the city government to improve home insulation, ventilation and stormwater systems. They also pooled savings to finance electricity connections.
In Tafara, where property titles remain pending, residents improved water access and sanitation through measures including waterless composting toilets, boreholes and other nature based solutions. In contrast, the threat of eviction in Crowborough North discouraged long term investment, leaving residents more reliant on individual and reactive responses. The findings underline the role of secure land rights in encouraging collective efforts to strengthen resilience.
Reconstruction programmes in Nepal and Pakistan have demonstrated the importance of making disaster-resilient homes accessible to persons with disabilities. After Nepal’s 2015 earthquake, masons received training in disability awareness and accessible design, while accessibility features were added to many homes that had already been rebuilt. Steep terrain, however, made ramps impractical in some locations.
In Pakistan’s Sindh province, disability information was collected during the initial damage assessment following the 2022 floods, identifying more than 100,000 people with disabilities. Project teams also consulted organisations representing persons with disabilities. In Haroon Sheikh settlement, around 84 square metres of tactile paving was installed to connect the homes of families with visually impaired children to water and sanitation facilities.
Community based weather warning systems have also helped residents prepare for extreme weather in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The Daraja project worked with local organisations and community leaders to develop forecasts that residents could understand and act upon.
Between April 2018 and September 2020, the initiative reached more than one million people. A survey of 700 households found that residents took greater preventive action ahead of severe weather, helping avoid losses and improve livelihoods.
Teachers and students played an important role in sharing warnings with families. In Dar es Salaam, a teacher at Keko Mwanga Primary School shared weather updates with pupils during the April-May 2019 rains. Students passed the information to their parents, particularly those living in low-lying areas, allowing families to protect belongings such as schoolbooks that had often been damaged by floods.
In Dhaka, Bangladesh, a heat adaptive housing design offers a way to improve living conditions in existing tin houses. The COOL SURFACES concept, one of three winning designs in an architecture competition organised by the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre and the IFRC Global Disaster Preparedness Center, proposes a cool floor, cool wall and cool roof using affordable local materials that residents can install themselves.
The design was informed by community surveys examining thermal comfort how households use their living spaces and residents’ preferences for construction materials. Ten designs progressed to a second round of the competition, with each paired with a mentor between November 2025 and February 2026.
Women have also played a significant role in rebuilding safer homes in Nepal. Following the 2015 earthquake, the country’s National Reconstruction Authority recruited 149 women as mobile masons across 14 of the worst-affected districts under a World Bank supported housing reconstruction programme. Women accounted for 20% of the mobile masons recruited.
Their responsibilities extended beyond construction to include technical advice, community outreach, house inspections and helping vulnerable households raise grievances. Women involved in the programme said the training had improved their livelihoods and strengthened their ability to support communities in rebuilding homes to more resilient standards.
In Chile and Argentina, residents of informal settlements are upgrading their homes and neighbourhoods to reduce risks from floods, wildfires and landslides. A 2026 study by the IFRC Global Disaster Preparedness Center examined initiatives in El Esfuerzo in Valparaíso, Chile and Nuevo Alberdi in Rosario, Argentina.
Based on 28 key informant interviews, four focus groups and participatory mapping, the study documented incremental home improvements, neighbourhood level projects and emergency practices built around mutual assistance, local knowledge and communication networks. It found that the scale, durability and fairness of these efforts depend on secure housing rights, integrated basic services and shared decision-making between communities and institutions.
Together, the seven examples show that resilient housing requires more than stronger buildings. Community savings, secure land rights, accessible design, reliable weather information, heat adaptive construction and inclusive reconstruction programmes can all help households prepare for disasters and recover more effectively.
UNDRR stressed that involving residents from the beginning helps ensure that housing improvements reflect local needs and practical realities. The organisation said resilience begins at home, but its success depends on giving communities a meaningful role in planning, construction and monitoring, particularly to ensure that vulnerable groups are not left behind.