We are a team of design and medical professionals. We partner with
underserved communities to raise their standard of living.
Our founder
Akin Afolayan, Executive Director, tells his side of the story:
I lived and worked in Nigeria for a number of years, and resided next door to slum dwellers. Despite the challenging conditions they live in they carried irrepressible hope and optimism that their life should get better. The question of how that can happen quicker stayed with me through my years of study and was shared by my friends. We started this as an academic project which was developed into an international competition entry, which won the 1st place prize in 2008. We decided to reinvest the prize money to form Hope Builds. We want hope builds to become a story about building health, community trust and dignity.”
Our Objective
Our objective is to work with communities to lay the groundwork for a thriving ecosystem of people and
organizations. We started with a question:
If you wanted to make a difference in a certain community
how will you go about it?
We figured that it would be by earning their trust. We believe that by providing free healthcare—a service they need most but can least afford—earns us the needed trust. This would enable us to develop a collaborative relationship in addressing their housing and infrastructure challenges.
Both Healthcare and Housing solutions can only attain sustainability if they are bound by focused job creation opportunities. These three elements—Health, Housing & Community–all work together to create a better future.
Our beliefs
We believe long‐term success is built through trust and collaboration.
Hope Builds believes the first priority when working with any community is to create a relationship based on trust. We build trust by delivering on our commitments. In order to ensure long‐term success of our programs, we collaborate with all stakeholders—young adults, women, community leaders, state and local administrations, like‐minded not‐for‐profit organizations and global institutions.
We believe that people are the greatest resource within any community.
Every individual has the capacity to improve his or her life and community, when the opportunity exists.
These beliefs fuel how we take conventional aid and transform it into a unique, customized tool for communities to move from surviving to thriving.
We believe that underserved communities are more than a statistic.
Every aid organization working today understands the importance of creating measurable benefits for a community and its people. But it’s how an organization generates those benefits that can make the difference between a temporary fix and a long-term solution.
