Habitat PKR Wins Innovation Award at the National Conference

From May 8-10, 2024, Habitat for Humanity Canada held its National Conference and Annual General Meeting in Windsor, Ontario. The event included the highly anticipated National Award Celebration Gala and Dinner, where twelve local Habitats were recognized for their remarkable efforts and accomplishments in 2023. Among the winners were Habitat for Humanity Peterborough & Kawartha Region, who won the Innovation Award!

The Innovation Award celebrates local Habitats that employ creative strategies to maximize their impact. This can include leveraging financial and other assets, enhancing efficiency in design and construction, or introducing novel ways to serve families. Habitat for Humanity Peterborough & Kawartha Region exemplified these principles through a groundbreaking initiative – a plan for a new car-share program called PKRides.

Habitat PKR has been successfully working with the City of Peterborough to reduce its parking requirements to 0.5 parking spaces per housing unit for future higher-density developments – maximizing its ability to build more homes. To offset this reduction in parking spots, in 2023 Habitat forged a partnership with students at Trent University to develop an app for the organization’s new car-share program. Thank you to Trent University students Matthew Makary, Emma Villas, Rishit Arora & Brady Gibson for their hard work and skills on this project. The program will provide future Habitat homeowners with access to an on-site, Habitat-owned vehicle that can be rented by the hour or day for a reasonable fee, reducing the homeowners’ overall environmental footprint in local communities.

Congratulations to the HabitatPKR team and all the winners for their exceptional contributions and for pushing the boundaries of what is possible in creating affordable housing solutions!