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community participation Archives - Page 7 of 7 - SASDI Alliance

Mar 15
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Re-blocking Kuku Town Informal Settlement

By CORC, FEDUP, iKhayalami, ISN, uTshani Fund No Comments
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View of Kuku Town in the process of re-blocking

Kuku Town informal settlement is located on a little triangle of open land opposite the railway line in Kensington, Cape Town. It is also home to about 50 people that make up 20 households.  The past week has been an eventful one as community members have seen the physical layout of their settlement transform day by day. They have taken down their old homes, structures made largely from pieces of old wood, plastic, cardboard and aluminium that were a safety risk, especially during fires.  Together with iKhayalami, an Alliance partner and support NGO the community cleared and levelled the ground as the more fire-resistant structures were erected.

3 years of preparation

Over the last three years Kuku Town prepared for upgrading by building up a relationship with the City of Cape Town, the Informal Settlement Network (ISN) and Community Organisation Resource Centre (CORC). During this time the Alliance also established a partnership with Habitat for Humanity South Africa (HFHSA). In establishing its interaction with the City, the community partnered with the alliance to organise and mobilise itself. Community members were actively involved in modeling, planning and mapping the re-blocked layout as well as collecting savings to contribute to the re-blocked structures. They gathered knowledge and experience about upgrading in community exchanges and collected information about Kuku Town in community-run profile and enumeration surveys.

Re-blocking: an Alliance approach and a City policy

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Community-drafted plan of Kuku Town before re-blocking

‘Re-blocking’ is a term used by the South African SDI Alliance to refer to the reconfiguration and repositioning of shacks in very dense informal settlements in accordance with a community-drafted spatial framework. Generally, re-blocking occurs in “clusters” identified by the community, which result in “courtyards”, ensure a safer environment and generally provide space for local government to install better services.

As Kuku Town is a small and dense settlement the re-blocked layout had to consider creative options. Together with CORCs technical team community designers erected the new structures along the sides of the neighbouring walls with a few re-blocked structures in the centre, opening up an L-shaped pathway throughout the settlement that enables public space and easy vehicle access in emergency situations. HFHSA stepped in at a crucial time to support the re-blocking process by sourcing G5 fill material to raise the new structures and mitigate potential flooding. As part of the community’s re-blocking proposal, the City agreed to install one-on-one water and sanitation services for every structure. This made a big difference to the 50 families who previously had to share 2 taps and 4 toilets.

The re-blocking of Kuku Town is also part of three pilot projects the City of Cape Town sought to support in the coming financial year after it adopted re-blocking as an official policy on 5 November 2013. The City thus indicated a long-term commitment of resources to re-blocking projects, to departmental alignment and to meaningful interventions in informal settlements.

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Community designed re-blocking plan for Kuku Town

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mobilising the community, engaging the City

In 2006 Kuku Town first appeared on the City’s informal settlement database, after a community leader engaged local councilors around poor service delivery. Later, in mid-2011 after the City and ISN / CORC signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) the community joined the ISN network and clarified a way forward for collaborative partnership with the City.

ISN community leader, Nkokheli Ncambele explains that the interaction between ISN and Kuku Town began when the PFO (Principal Field Officer) of the City’s Informal Settlement Management Department introduced Kuku Town community leaders to other upgrading processes in the informal settlements of Burundi and Sheffield Road. These exchanges provided an opportunity to learn, ask questions and share experiences about informal settlement upgrading. Once community leaders had met with the city and ISN a big meeting took place in Kuku Town to explain upgrading to the community.

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Mzwanele Zulu (ISN), City officials, Verona Joseph (Community leader)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After some initial resistance the community decided to opt for re-blocking. This meant that they needed to start saving toward contributing to their own structures.Verona Joseph, Kuku Town community leader, explains that

“over 3 years we managed to save R 15 000. Most people in our community are above 50 years. Only 3 are employed and 5 get a pension. But even the old people managed to save money”

64-year old Auntie Hana Olyn and her husband Piet Jordaan, remember how

“when we collected two bottles we would save the deposit from one bottle. We also collected tins, did the gardening or ironed people’s clothes. This is how we managed to save quickly. Most people could earn R 100 a day. Some of this they used for savings.”

Most community members chose 12m2 and 20m2 structures for which they respectively needed to save R740 and R1000.  The remaining cost of the structure was covered by the Community Upgrading Finance Facility (CUFF). Savings are recorded in personal savings books and are deposited in a community savings account. Regular bank reconciliations are communicated to the group.

 

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Verona and Auntie Hana Olyn in her new home

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Community savings records

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In April 2012 community members also led an enumeration in Kuku Town through which they gathered relevant, verifiable, and specific data that was used to build models and draft the re-blocking plans. For Verona, the enumeration brought about another success:

“Before the enumeration we had people from different families staying in one structure. Only some of them were registered with the council. I wanted to push for every family to get their own structure. The problem was that some people did not qualify because they were not registered with the council. But with the enumeration we re-counted everyone and got them re-registered.  This was the most important thing! The council then agreed that every family could have its own structure.”

 “As a community we are more comfortable now”

Lydia and Verona, both on the leadership committee, agree that this is one of the biggest changes.

 “We don’t have rats any more and when it rains we won’t lose our clothes. But people’s way of life is also changing. It was a struggle to convince them, but now they have other things to focus on – they are fixing things in their homes. With the new structures everyone’s lives will pick up because this is a very upgraded informal settlement now”.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Feb 28
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Building Partnerships: Comic Relief vice chair and film director Richard Curtis visits SA Alliance

By CORC, News No Comments

By Yolande Hendler (on behalf of CORC)

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Richard Curtis, Melanie Manuel (ISN), Emma Freud, Bunita Kohler (Director of CORC), Marlene Don (FEDUP) and Bukiwe Marawu (CORC)

Last week, the South African Shack Dwellers Alliance welcomed Comic Relief vice-chair and film director/producer/writer Richard Curtis with his wife, Emma Freud, and family at the Cape Town office. Before arriving he told his children,

“Today I’m meeting the people I work for”.

As a renowned film-maker, Curtis is also co-founder of the UK based charity Comic Relief which has been one of the alliance’s principal development partners since 2011. Together, they spent a morning meeting the alliance partners, visiting Mtshini Wam informal settlement where community members explained the process of re-blocking and showed Curtis and his family what a re-blocked settlement can look like. They also visited the Solid Waste Network, one of the alliance’s income generation initiatives.

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Mthsini Wam community members explain reblockingDSCN5542

Building Partnerships

To achieve the vision of more inclusive and pro poor cities it is critical to build partnerships with urban development actors who support this vision. The alliance’s association with Comic Relief as a development partner is a platform for organised communities to be at the core of building such cities. Communities are best positioned to contribute to design and to plan development solutions that have greater impact and sustainability than external development interventions. The alliance’s partnerships not only include the network of SDI affiliated countries or partnerships with government but also focus on partnerships with international aid agencies and donors, such as Comic Relief.

Founded in 1985, Comic Relief’s vision is of a “just world, free from poverty” (Reference). By raising funds through campaigns such as Red Nose Day and Sport Relief, Comic Relief spends these on projects that tackle the “root causes of poverty and social injustice in the UK and across the world” (Ibid). In particular Comic Relief supports projects “on the ground”, giving people a “leg up, not a hand out” (Ibid). Comic Relief displays a long term view of achieving this vision and therefore forms lasting partnerships with local organisations. Some projects are supported for up to six years whereby the progress of projects is tracked and funds are paid in phases.

Comic Relief and the South African Alliance

Comic Relief has been a core funding partner of the Alliance’s work since 2011 when uTshani Fund secured a grant for supporting the core activities of FEDUP housing development process. The grant is in its second year of operations and aims to support community lead projects in housing development and informal settlement upgrading (via the uTshani Fund housed funding facility Community Upgrading Finance Facility). uTshani Fund and CORC have formed a close working relationship in addressing the challenges of homelessness, landlessness and urban poverty.

The Community Organisation Resource Centre (CORC) has also been successful in applying to Comic Relief for grant funding. As part of its UK Aid Match scheme, Comic Relief formed a partnership with the Department for International Development (DFID). In December 2011 DFID agreed to provide a further £10m of funding for Comic Relief’s Urban Slums work. This sum would be matched by Comic Relief through funds raised during Sport Relief 2012, thereby totaling £20m. This new fund is intended to transform the lives of a million slum dwellers in a limited number of African cities through the strategic collaboration of agencies. The funding spans five years in total.

CORC and the South African alliance partners responded to the call for proposals and were successful in their application. The core of the funding proposal focussed on setting up a local city fund which will deliver informal settlement upgrading projects in the area of Khayelitsha in the City of Cape Town. The city fund is a responsive mechanism that aims to achieve a long term sustainable fund which could be replicated and/or recapitalised by City and Provincial government.

The beginning of Comic Relief funded projects in Khayelitsha

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Community leaders plan and design in KhayelitshaDSCN5063

As part of the Comic Relief grant, the alliance has been engaging with several neighbouring communities in Khayelitsha that live in UT, TT and BT sections, Litha Park and UT Gardens. Since mid 2012 these communities have been forming a horizontal relationship with ISN structures. After community members living in UT Gardens profiled and enumerated their section, they expressed the need for a crèche / multi-purpose centre for the community on a nearby open field.  Since the start of 2014 community leaders have continuously met with each other and CORC’s technical support team.

The meetings have had two aspects: On the one hand the community leaders expressed some key issues to address such as drainage and managing waste disposal. On the other, they co-designed and co-conceptualised the first drafts of the crèche / multi-purpose centre and identified existing footpaths and transit spaces. As the discussions continue, community leaders are eager to see this project lift off the ground.

This, then, is one of the projects that the Comic Relief grant supports. On the surface, it looks entirely different from Mtshini Wam or the Solid Waste Network which Curtis and his family visited. Yet the similarity lies in the tools that each community uses to organise itself. It lies in communities who lead their own design and planning. The SA SDI Alliance values long term funding agreements with international development partners such as Comic Relief (and its associations and members) that recognise the imperatives of informal settlement upgrading, housing and land, and livelihoods development.

 

 

 

 

Jan 20
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2012 / 2013 CORC Annual Report

By CORC, FEDUP, ISN, Publications, uTshani Fund No Comments

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With great pleasure CORC ‘s annual report looks back on an event-filled 2012-2013 which set the scene for community mobilisations, beginning and continuing partnerships with government, valuable developments on urban sustainability and our documentation strategies. However, the past year was also marked by the effects of the global financial crisis which were acutely felt by urban poor communities in the form of rapid urbanisation and a continuing lack of government service delivery.  By supporting urban poor informal settlements CORC supports communities in building a “platform of the urban poor”.

In this report outlines an overview of CORC’s general activities and supportive role to its alliance partners, the Informal Settlement Network (ISN) and the Federation of the Urban Poor (FEDUP) both of which are social movements involved in community-led upgrading processes. You will get an impression of dynamics around community savings, community mobilisations, enumerations, international events and exchanges. Please note that detailed project reports can be found in the separate publication, Masikhase: Community Upgrading Finance Facility (CUFF).

In addition to comments from our regional offices and a financial overview, the report also contains updated developments on our existing partnerships and new working relationships with government. Partnerships with local governments include the City of Cape Town, Stellenbosch Municipality (mature partnerships), City of Joburg Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality, eThekwini Metropolitan Municipality, Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality, Midvaal Municipality (partnerships in progress), Breedevalley and Drakenstein Municipalities (signs of potential working relationships).

“We know that when the poor are not involved in development decisions they will care less about their surroundings or even use their initiative to resist paying for their services. our new approach means we will build partnerships with communities, and to give them ‘voice and choice’ in the design and construction of settlements that build sustainable livelihoods and can fulfil their needs” Deputy minister of Human Settlements, Ms. Zoe Kota-Fredericks”

As CORC supports communities making meaningful alternatives to change the structural causes of informality we aim to shift the focus of service delivery from government to partnerships and collaborative relationships.  This year, our work with organised communities, academic and non-governmental partners therefore centred on realising issues of urban sustainability. Some of these include the Solid Waste Network, partnering with Habitat for Humanity South Africa in establishing a city fund or introducing solar electrification in informal settlements.

The report outlines some of the successes and challenges of building coalitions of the urban poor in the contexts of landlessness, homelessness and urban poverty. We wish to congratulate our community partners for the number of awards and nominations for projects delivered, the hard work of collecting data and the patience of building partnerships.

CORC wishes to thank international donor organisations for believing in the vision and supporting the work of the SA SDI Alliance. These donors include:

  • Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation: (“Aligning communities and government”)
  • Ford Foundation (“Promoting Transparent Effective and Accountable Government”)
  • Charles Steward Mott Foundation (“General Purposes” and “Learning through Practice”)
  • Comic Relief (Ikhayalethu grant)
  • Misereor (“Building partnerships between communities and local authorities”)