Report on Exchange Programme: Sao Paulo: Brazil

(19^th July to 25^th July 2005)

 

The 19^th of July was the arrival day in Sao Paulo Brazil, and there was a brief meeting between the NGO (Interação) and South African, SDI delegates to discuss the programme for the whole week. A meeting was later held at the Polis Institute with Community leaders from different social movements of São Paulo (City), Polis Institute representatives, Interação and the SDI delegates (South African).

 

Polis Institute

The main aim of the meeting was to introduce the SDI delegates from South Africa and to discuss and agree on issues that were to be discussed at a National Favela Meeting that they were planning and organizing for November 2005. The following are some of the outlined issues:

      Advocate for inner-city accommodation

      Secure tenure

     Split of the council or cities into regions so that they operate as isolated entities

       Come up with a proposal to set up a National Slum Policy

       National and international coordination of social movements in black informal settlements, and also to facilitate international exchange programmes

       Lack of investment in the communities

      Government policies review (there was a feeling that these policies did not cater for the poor people in the poor communities)

 

Patrick, Rose and Bunjiwe outlined the experience from the South African side. There was a proposal from the South African delegates that they also include issues like

       Information gathering (enumerations)

     Creation of community data bases

       Exchange programmes amongst communities

       The start of savings schemes (groups) as a way of strengthening the economic base of these communities and as a way of mobilizing these communities.

 

The social movements want the participation of the South African Federation , ActionAid is ready to sponsor the expenses and will formally invite a delegation from South Africa within the nexts months.

 

Nelson Saulo from Instituto Pólis also presented a draft document of a letter claiming the social right of a city by  every inhabitant of the world. This document should be presented mainly by Latin American organizations on a Forum in Barcelona in September. Instituto Pólis and Actionaid asked for the support from the South Africans and will also try to invite and sponsor a major African participation on this Forum in Barcelona.

 

City of Varzea Paulista

The second day was a visit the City of Varzea Paulista, municipality with approximately 106.000 inhabitants, where the first meeting was with the Mayor, the technicians from the Department of works, Interaction (NGO) and the South African delegates. This was a meeting to discuss the following:

 

Interação and SDI presented themselves and briefly explained the methodology of organization around savings schemes, enumeration and women participation.

 

The Mayor and the Secretary for Public Works  showed their plans for Vila Real, an informal settlement with about 6 thousand households, wich include land regularization and upgrading of urban infra-structure, like streets and sewage for the whole area.

 

The showed great interest for the SDI methodologies and outlined their interest on work in a partnership with SDI and Interação, sealing it through an agreement with both organizations.

 

Later during the day, there was a meeting with the community of Vila Real (Real Village). The delegation and local officials from the Council and the NGO were met with demands from the community children and these were well written on pieces of papers and handed over. These were some of the issues outlined:

       Need for pavements in the area

       Need for illumination

      Need for flood lights

      Need for a children’s playground

       Need for a sports field

       Need for a health station

     Need for legal tenure

      Need for community services to be put in the community and not far away from the community

       Need for a recreational area

      Need for a police station

     Need for educational facilities and a computer center

 

The settlement has aproximately 6 000 households and has been earmarked for an in-situ upgrade by the Council. There was an agreement from the Mayor and the City officials and the NGO (Interação), that an enumeration be done in the area as a whole prior to the execution of the Councils’ upgrade initiative, and September or October 2005 were proposed as  appropriate dates to start the numeration. On the discussions it was agreed upon that this would be the learning point of all the other settlements in the other cities, as an alternative upgrade strategy in these informal settlements.

 

The whole exercise would need the assistance from the South African Homeless Peoples Federation and would be led by the community of Vila Real. There was a proposal also to start savings groups within the area. The community and the Association of Vila Real, through which the community negotiates and creates dialogue with the relevant stakeholders, met the proposals and presentation with great enthusiasm.

In preparation for an enumeration, the community was given the following task:

      Draw the boundaries of the whole area

      Divide the area into manageable sections

     Organise themselves into a small group and start saving- micro saving group (Rose helped choose a handful of women that should start saving)

      Make a list of activities and community services in the whole settlement.

All this would be in preparation of the enumeration proposed for September/October 2005.

 

City of Osasco

 On the 21^st July was the day of the visit to the City of Osasco. In the morning we visited a community (informal settlement) called Area Y, a settlement that is a year and a half old, with a total of 284 households (150 households are women headed) and 937 people. There was a meeting with city Technicians and the community with its representatives. Presentations on savings, enumerations were made, and council-community partnerships were also emphasized as an experience in South Africa, particularly with the City of Durban.

Most of the families have some form of income that they get from the social programmes provided by the Government (local and Federal).

Water, electricity and sewer is not formal in the whole settlement.

The community at large has promoted and supported activities like sport, health and adult literacy, and most of those involved in these activities are women. They have learnt to coordinate themselves through sport and other social activities.

Interação gave support for a recent enumeration of the settlement, engaging community members on the exercise. Data is being now verified by the community.

 

There was however, difficulty in making the community understand the issue on savings and mobilizing the community around savings. There was need and emphasis that the area be revisited by the NGO (Interação) to further educate on savings and enumerations.

 

Another community, Vicentina, was also visited, however they had land issues which they wanted feedback and action on from their councilor, and as a result they initially resisted the issue of savings prior to solving the land issue, but after the presentation from Rose and Patrick on the importance of savings and community mobilization, there was hope that they might buy into the idea of saving as a way of planning ahead to solving such issues as land, evictions and housing.

 

In the late afternoon there was a meeting held at the Department of Housing (City of Osasco) with the Housing secretary and his team (technicians) where the issue of working with organized communities was discussed. The technicians were willing to work with the communities in the self-enumerations as a way of creating or rebuilding that confidence in the communities. The strategy was a way of breaking the ‘dependency syndrome’ of the communities and creating self-dependency and self trust.

 

The Municipality showed great engagement related with the partnership with the communities, Interação and SDI. They outlined their difficulties on working with non organized communities and the historically political dependency of the population in Osasco, after many years of artificial programs not oriented for the further development of the poor people.

 

On the 22^nd there was a meeting again with three communities (Portal Meinc, Portal Campo and Jardim Allianca) in the City of Osasco, attending the meetings were Patrick, Rose and Sandra.

 

The meeting gathered the community members of Portal Campo and Meinc. The approach with the population was very difficult and they resisted to accept the methodology of the savings schemes.  At the end a savings group was formed and they agreed on the support of Interação on helping by the firsts steps of the group.

 

Jardim Aliança, the third community visit on the day, had been given an eviction order by an Electricity Company as their structures were dangerously situated right on the electricity line servitude. They were given 15 days to vacate the area. A proposal was put across that they should negotiate for more days with the Electricity Company as they look for the best alternative to move to. They had to count and number the structures, and have records for these in the form of writing, count the number of adults and children in the whole area. They agreed to this proposal and the self-enumeration was done on the 23^rd July 2005. This produced a total count of 228 households.

Then issue of savings was also introduced to the community of Jardim Allianca, as a way forward should the eviction become imminent. They had to save for their transport when the day to move comes, and if they were to stay longer the better coz they would look for alternative sites or land with the assistance of the Municipality.

A big savings scheme was also opened in this community with the participation of both men and women.

 

City of Santo Andre

22^nd  July

 

There was a meeting with the technicians from the Housing Department of the City of Santo Andre, the Projects Facilitator from the Durban Municipality (South Africa) and the NGO. The housing policy of the city of Santo Andre was briefly discussed, and the communication channels between the city of Santo Andre and the communities. The Communities communicate to the city through Associations, which then are involved directly with the Housing Department.

The issue of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the City of Durban and the City of Santo Andre was also discussed briefly. The NGO (Interação) and the Housing Department of the City of Santo Andre highlighted that they were free and willing to sign the MOU. The Minister of Housing had been recently changed and it is going to be difficult with the new appointed Minister.

 

There was a proposal from the Housing Department of Santo Andre and the NGO that the signing be done through an exchange between the Housing Department Technicians of Santo Andre and Durban, and use the enumeration in Varzea Paulista as an entry point or as an example to both technicians and the communities. The other proposal was to do a Cities Alliance workshop where technicians were to discuss zoning, mixture of economic and social activities when planning for communities. (i.e. the City of Durban, Cape Town, Johannesburg, and Sao Paulo).

 

A site visit to one of the Hosing Departments in-situ upgrade projects was conducted in the late afternoon, Sacadura Cabral. This is a project where the Housing department made subdivisions of a former slum settlement to approximately 27-28m2 sites and provided the beneficiaries with a foundation. Then they gave them technical assistance so that they could finish the double storeys on their own. The community found different  informal ways to finance the construction.  On almost all their projects, densification is high priority because of the issue of land unavailability.

 

Meeting with the MDDF

24^rd July

 

This is a social movement with offices in Santo Andre, and they communicate with the Municipality on behalf of the communities in Santo Andre. The movement is made up representatives from different communities, and has been in dialogue with Housing Department since 1991 and the struggle and accomplishments on issues pertaining to land and urbanization has continued to date.

The South African delegates also did their presentation on the experiences of the Homeless Peoples Federation, their struggle and accomplishments to date. Emphasis was being put more on community organization and empowerment, i.e. enumerations, community mobilisation and savings schemes. An agreement was reached that the MDDF would adopt the strategies used by the Homeless Peoples Federation as social movement in South Africa. They agreed on self-enumerations and savings in the communities, and again Varzea Paulista would be used as the learning center for all the other communities.

 

São Paulo

 

No meeting was hold with the São Paulo Municipality because many key professionals were on vacation by the time.

 

On the 24^th July a meeting was held at Jardim Redenção, small community of about 40 households threatened by eviction from private land owner. They had started a savings group at the beginning of the year, but gave up as soon as they lost all the legal ways by the official prosecution.

 

Patrick and Rose gave them many examples of how organized communities faced this kind of problems in all the SDI countries, outlining the great importance of the savings groups in those processes. They also investigate with them their real situation and we found out different levels of knowledge within the group and many incomplete information.

 

They were sitting and waiting for help by the Municipality or from politicians for about 7 years instead of preparing their selves to by the land or find another place to go. After a very positive brainstorming, SDI and Interação decided to strengthen the support for this community as a case study and the community restarted the savings group and showed strong will to lead a negotiation with the land owner.

 

Evaluation Exercise

The 25^th July was the last day of the exchange programme and an evaluation was conducted by the South African delegation and the NGO (Interação).

The following issues were discussed:

Wayforward with the Savings

       The NGO was to make regular visits to the communities where savings schemes were established. Record dates, attendance register, size of savings scheme and amount saved. Help put treasurers together an encourage them to meet after every week

       Offer assistance or education on savings where communities still do not understand

      Make community exchange programmes. Visit areas that understand savings better and then encourage and let the process overspill into other areas.

 

Way forward on Proposed enumeration (Varzea Paulista)

 

       Put together the enumeration information, e.g. with the assistance and input from the Housing department, put together an enumeration questionnaire/ form.

      Assist the community in Varzea Paulista to divide the area into blocks and in mapping out the boundary in preparation for the enumeration

 

General

      It was agreed that the NGO would give a full report back to the Municipalities of the areas visited during the exchange programme

      There was need for the NGO (Interaction) to convene a meeting with all the relevant stakeholders, i.e. the Municipalities or Housing departments, Community representatives and the Social Movements and present their programme of the partnership and or plan of action.

      A discussion on issues like: Land, Tenure, Enumerations, Savings, Relocation and Evictions should also be conducted with all the relevant stakeholders.

 

Summarizing

 

1) Osasco: we set 3 savings groups and did 1 enumeration. The 3 communities are priority thought we have still 5 on the Duban MOU, the other 2 must organize savings schemes as a condition to receive more support from INTERAÇÃO/SDI. Municipality ok to sign the MOU with Durban.

2) Várzea Paulista: out of the Durban Agreement, savings scheme set and plan for enumeration in stember/october (aprox. 6 thousand households). Very engaged community will be upgraded by the municipality.

 

3) São Paulo: just visited 1 community, Jardim Redenção. Eviction threatened, savings scheme restarted, support from INTERAÇÃO and SDI as case study. No meetings with the Municipality, everybody on vacations, no feed back from the International Relations Secretary about Durban MOU. We think they need a push from Durban´s side.

 

4) Santo André: no community appointed, Municipality put as first condition a passage through the slums social movement, MDDF. They don´t know if they are interested after a 4 hours meeting. Rose and Patrick proposed to postpone the agreement with Durban Municipality. Santo André is very interested on a technical exchange with Durban.