For centuries, bamboo has been central to life in Nepal, serving as a material for homes, tools and rituals. In the southern Terai plains, it was essential for survival in regions prone to natural disasters. However, traditional bamboo structures were temporary and fragile, requiring constant repair and maintenance, preventing families from investing in other aspects of their lives.

Inadequate housing is more than just a deficit—it’s a barrier to safety, health, andeconomic progress, trapping countless families in a relentless cycle of poverty with higher exposure to violence and limited future perspectives for their children. The Hilti Foundation is on a mission to break this cycle through innovative technologies, sustainable building practices, and through working on solutions to solve the problem holistically.

As we celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the BASE Bahay Foundation, we look back on a decade of groundbreaking work in bamboo construction, transforming lives of thousands of low-income families through innovative and affordable housing solutions.

In Peru, a safe home is a distant dream for many families facing the dual threats of environmental risks and a severe lack of skilled labor. An alarming 80% of constructions are informally built, leaving half of them vulnerable to earthquakes. This shocking reality demands urgent action.

After her visits to Peru as part of the Viviendas Progresivas (VIPRO) project, Melinda Sasfi, Project Manager at Hilti Foundation, observed that houses are built haphazardly, and quality is not a focus. As a result, people build without professional supervision and much of what is built is simply poor construction. At the same time, the government has no plan to solve the problem. In addition to the poor quality of construction, there is another challenge: cost.

For over a decade, the Hilti Foundation investigates and promotes innovative bamboo construction technologies for affordable housing in Southeast Asia. Together with the BASE Bahay Foundation, located in Manila, and implementing partners, more than 1,500 houses have been built in the Philippines and Nepal.

Where would you sleep, live, and raise your kids without a safe place to call home? Adequate housing is recognized as a human right. Yet, in Nepal, nearly half of the population lives in substandard housing conditions, hindering their opportunities for social and economic advancement. Like many in her country, 29-year-old Pramila, a devoted mother of two, intimately understands the impact of this challenge.

With its research and testing center, the Bamboo Academy and its own construction projects in the Philippines, Nepal and other Asian countries, the BASE Bahay Foundation, founded by the Hilti Foundation in 2014, aims to make bamboo a standard building material of the future – dedicated to the needs in construction of low-income families.

By 2030, it is predicted that 3 billion people worldwide will be living in substandard housing. Affecting their education, health and livelihood, this is one of the reasons why underprivileged families remain in the so-called poverty trap. To help alleviate this situation, the Hilti Foundation, together with the BASE Bahay Foundation, collaborate for affordable technology solutions to improve housing and the lives of low-income families.

To date, CBFT, has been primarily used in the Philippines and Nepal to build affordable homes for families in need. The Hilti Foundation's green and disaster resilient construction technology has now been further developed, showing high potential to be used in larger community buildings to provide livelihoods for families from disadvantaged backgrounds and their communities. The first facility has just opened.

The Affordable Housing & Technology focus area is about changing the way low-income families build and live. Here, our work is based on three initiatives: spreading bamboo construction, creating an inclusive housing industry, and building coalitions of impact.

We are extremely proud to announce that the MicroBuild Fund has received the World Habitat Award by UN-Habitat. The MicroBuild Fund of Habitat for Humanity International focuses on helping low-income families access housing through microfinance institutions and has helped over one million people worldwide.

Affordable Housing & Technology is one of the Hilti Foundation's focus areas. That involves more than the well-known Cement Bamboo Frame Technology, which provides safe and sustainable homes for families in need. The Foundation also supports the development and implementation of other solutions to improve the way families live and build.

To promote and expand affordable housing markets, Habitat for Humanity’s Terwilliger Center for Innovation in Shelter launched ShelterTech, the world’s leading platform for affordable housing innovation, which targets pioneering shelter entrepreneurs. The Hilti Foundation’s support for ShelterTech and the Terwilliger Center’s Shelter Venture Labs puts entrepreneurs at the center of a highly connected ecosystem of collaborative partners.

The Hilti Foundation and Habitat for Humanity are working together to scale Cement Bamboo Frame Fechnology in Nepal and the Philippines. This innovative building method was developed by Base Bahay Foundation, an organization founded by the Hilti Foundation. The homes built using this technology are constructed with specially treated bamboo and cement plaster that makes them disaster-resilient and sustainable.

1,200 low-income families have found a new home thanks to Cement Bamboo Frame Technology, a disaster-resilient construction solution developed by the Hilti Foundation.

As a global phenomenon, the housing situation of the poor is dramatic: An estimated 1.6 billion people live in substandard housing, and this number will almost double until 2030. Most of them will end up in so-called informal settlements, starting to build by themselves. In Lima, Peru, like in many other regions of the world, housing construction is a long-lasting process, not a purchase. For low-income families in particular, construction costs are often more critical than quality, which impacts the families’ safety and health.

Habitat for Humanity, a longtime partner organization of the Hilti Foundation, has started to build safe and disaster-resilient homes in Nepal for families in need. Since its inception in 1997, bamboo has been the environmentally friendly and local building material of choice for Habitat Nepal. But the current project is the first in the country to use the Hilti Foundation’s innovative CBFT.

The first Africa Housing Forum is rapidly approaching! Organized by Habitat for Humanity International this hybrid event will take place both place both virtually and in-person in Nairobi, Kenya from May 12-14, 2022. Hilti Foundation is the forum’s global presenting sponsor.

In 2011, together with its long-standing partner organization Swisscontact, the Hilti Foundation launched Construya, a qualification program for the informal construction sector in Colombia. Construya has developed training modules, in cooperation with state vocational training institutions, that teach better construction practices for the informal sector.