Jo Stielau for CDRA 2007
Tools and Strategies Self reliance is key in shack communities and, as a result, community exchanges promote a self-help empowerment model. Urban community exchanges have resulted in the development of many useful tools and strategies for the homeless as follows: 17 1) Surveys and data gathering Settlement and city surveys are an important tool in educating communities to look at themselves and in creating a capacity for communities to talk knowledgeably about themselves to those with whom they interact- be they visitors from other communities or state departments. Enumeration of shacks and households, and record keeping, are powerful tools used by communities to lobby government agencies. Community exchanges have often featured the techniques of conducting surveys on various levels Questionnaires and other survey methodologies are discussed with communities and modified as necessary. Slum residents are capable of gathering demographic as well as socioeconomic information about the community and their familiarity with their location is important because this data is often not available even to policy makers and its provision helps ensure that development plans are feasible and appropriate. 2) Savings and credit schemes: These are often the central point of women’s group exchanges. Examples of ways of creating and sustaining savings schemes have included: - primary activities such as the ‘savings walk’ of Mahila Milan in India and the Payatas Scavenger’s Federation in Manila where exchange visitors actually go house to house with one of the host women, collect the money, document it, come back to the office, count the money, put it in the ledger and process the loans. - ways in which pooled savings can be used to finance a capital fund for crisis loans (for a funeral for example) including developing rules and regulations to make such a crisis credit fund operational. - loans of additional capital from state agencies once a recognised savings body has been set up and is functioning - savings schemes can then lend for income generation and can access housing loans. - demonstrations of how, “through savings, the poor [in Ghana] are able to mobilize their resources and become financially stronger by creating jobs and expanding businesses [and] enabling communities to better negotiate with governments for shelter improvements and secure tenure. Savings further build trust, collective identity, and leadership as the treasurers of daily savings are selected from within the group. “ 18 − also featuring in exchanges ( particularly in Nigeria) is LETS, a local trading currency initiative for poor communities without access to cash.
3) Mapping: Poor urban communities have found mapping a useful tool to share. When communities build their skills in mapping services, settlements, resources or environmental problems (eg a landfill site or a polluting industry), etc. then they can get a visual representation of how their present physical situation affects them. Along with surveying and data-gathering, mapping becomes especially useful in building community skills to deal with physical interventions. When communities are 17
The Asian Coalition for Housing Rights (ACRH) (2007) extracts from Face to Face Magazine on SDI and ACHR Community Exchanges www.achr.net 18 People’s Dialogue on Human Settlements (PDHS) Annual Report March 2007