By Francesco Piazzesi, founder and CEO of ¡Échale! a Tu Casa and Sofia Rodríguez Díaz, strategic development director.

Tackling inadequate housing in Mexico, ¡Échale! a Tu Casa has created a model which incorporates social inclusion for the base of the pyramid

Housing rights are fundamental human rights. As an essential component of the right to an adequate standard of living, housing rights are a starting point for mobilizing to protect marginalized communities. This is because appropriate living conditions are a key determinant of other basic rights such as the rights to development, health, and social protection. According to the United Nations, more than 1 billion people worldwide live in inadequate conditions. This means that the 17% of the world's population face poor housing conditions.

As the world's population grows and urbanisation reaches all corners of the globe, disparities in living conditions become more striking, clusters of poverty become entrenched and homelessness becomes a critical concern. In this climate, housing rights emerge as an essential condition for human development. As the scholar Bogumil Terminiski put it, "For each person on the planet, home is essential for strengthening social ties".

It is important to distinguish what constitutes 'adequate' housing. Having a roof over one's head is not enough- many people around the world live in tin or cardboard houses that do not provide true physical or psychological security. This is the situation for 9 million Mexican families, which the government has tried to address through social housing projects. Unfortunately, government programmes have only been able to place 4 million families in adequate housing – the rest is up to us.

That is why ¡Échale! a Tu Casa created a model that provides housing for the base of the pyramid, facilitating not only social inclusion, but also integrating financial solutions for obtaining new homes or implementing home improvements. According to Mexico's National Housing Commission, 6 million Mexican families still need to improve their living conditions. ¡Échale! understands the housing deficit as a social problem in need of a creative solution, and has created a model that makes the community a part of the solution. To generate upward mobility, participant families themselves need to be actively involved.

The model involves community organisation and social inclusion, financial education, technical training, and social franchising. Houses are co-designed with participants and families are empowered through participation in community housing committees.

More than 20 years of work with communities has shown that involving participants in every step of the process is a key factor in the programme's success. Through their involvement, they can learn new skills, develop self-esteem and drive their own development. Working hand in hand with communities, we have learned how to listen and help identify their basic needs and challenges and how to address them through working with community members on the ground as partners. We use this knowledge in workshops with communities to identify and address their particular social issues. Financial workshops are always part of the formula, and act as a starting point for participants' inclusion.

We at ¡Échale! do not believe that giving away our product is the best solution to a social problem. Every home and home improvement we build has a fair price. We understand that for our target market, this price can be overwhelming, which is why we use the financial workshop to help families manage their incomes and raise awareness of the importance of saving. At ¡Échale!, we offer credit solutions with a fair and affordable interest rate that are specifically designed for our housing programme and the communities we serve.

Through our housing programme, we not only seek to improve the lives of participants, but to enhance the economies of entire communities. We achieve this by employing community members as construction workers, and by acquiring more than 60% of home building materials through local providers.

Involving entire communities in the process of home construction makes them a part of the solution, and empowers them to attain the type of housing that all human beings have a right to. It is truly remarkable to witness the empowerment and living conditions that a well-built home can bring. There is still a lot of work to be done. At ¡Échale! every day is an adventure and every community's unique characteristics represent a new challenge. We embrace these challenges because we understand that our work is about improving the lives of millions of Mexican families. It is also about developing a sense of social and financial inclusion in every corner of our country – and ultimately the world – so that we can all grow together.

Find out more here: BCtA ¡Échale! a Tu Casa Case Study

Content on this page is provided by Business Call to Action, and originally appeared on the The Guardian Business and the Sustainable Development Goals Hub