Nepal visit 7th and 8th March 06

Why was this visit planned? In December Lumanti organized the inauguration of the first 44 houses constructed at Kiritpur. I was unable to go the inauguration but Mahila Milan attended this along with the Thai communities. This was followed by a visit of 10 Nepali’s to Bombay soon after. Lajana made it sound like they had to make use of a budget that would lapse by the end of the year and so they had to use it. (One of the frailties of the development world is to be a slave of funders and their funding patterns). I then made a commitment to Lajana that I would make a visit soon.

Sherry Bartlett who is a consultant for Save the Children a Swedish organization which is now international was also here a month ago to discuss how we can develop a documentation plan to begin to look at children’s issues in resettlement. The emphasis here is look at children in the context of their integral communities and therefore looking at how communities and their organizations have an effect on and is based in Nepal. Save the Children also sees lessons here for itself for creating a more robust strategy for children in the future. Sherry also invited me to visit Nepal to meet with the STC team in Nepal.

I spent two full days with Lumanti on the field and the office with Lajana, other staff and the federation leaders.

Had two very good meetings in the community with the savings cooperatives and another with the federation leadership both men and women. I also visited the housing construction site at Kiritpur. I had visited Nepal last before I went on my sabbatical and it was tremendous to see how much they had grown.

Some general reflections for SDI from these meetings and visits.

1. The constant negotiation needed between the NGO and the federation leadership cannot be underestimated and needs a lot of time and energy if the aim is to create cadres of community leaders who feel empowered to run their processes. This input has to be done very consciously and has tremendous implications for the capacity building process both for the NGO and the federation leadership. It is like watering the plant every day and if ignored can create hurdles that are unnecessary and can be avoided. Just regular communication between the leadership of the two organizations helps make this walk together so much more effective. It is a constant straddle between what funders want NGOs to do and what the leadership in both organizations can deliver and not deliver. Unless this is confronted honestly and looked at more consciously most of us go through the rituals of being a good NGO that no one can poke fingers at and end up compromising heavily on the building the indigenous capacity of the communities to self actualize and reach certain conclusions at a more natural time and space. So for example there was a whole conversation that I had with the federation of how they felt that if they were given the whole budget they would manage on their own. The Lumanti staff responded by saying that the funders had their requirements and so they could not do it that way as they were accountable for. It is constantly a challenge for NGOs to be able to create their own separate identities outside their funding relationships which enables them to bridge the gap between the communities they work with. Especially younger NGOs struggle with trying to manage this.

2. However, the other half of the problem lies with the NGO structure. It is not easy for NGOs to let go of many decisions and actually hand them over to the community and many NGOs struggle with this. The fear is real to some extent as they are just not equipped on how to deal with the streetwise ness of the community leadership. For most middle class activist the way slum dwellers do business with them is always an area of discomfort. They are most comfortable in a relationship of the giver and the receiver, in a situation where they can control and decide the material and financial resources as this gives them a sense of power. Handing over power to the communities and yet complying with the demands of the formal world is a skill all NGOs in today’s context have to learn to do if they have to be more effective.

3. Many NGOs also spend a lot of time and resources training and exposing themselves to death. It is not so easy to make the same investment with communities. This is one of the main challenges for SDI in its work in the different cities. The only way to create strong federations of the urban poor is to have strong NGOs who have the courage to let go but at the same time take responsibility for the role they have to play to create empowered communities of the poor. This is an area that SDI has been looking at more carefully during exchanges. It is also important to separate the needs of the NGO and the communities. Within SDI there is a growing need to give special attention to this and invest in both.

Within SDI some of us are more conscious of this area and trying to develop a way by which to address issues that help strengthen this new relationship between NGOs and communities. It is an area that needs careful articulation so that it does not get sidelined either by the NGO or the community leadership.

4. The construction at Kiritpur was highly commendable. There are many learning’s from this project for all of us.

It is a constant challenge is to look at area of house and cost of construction and checking if this is affordable.

The next controversial issue is always that of allocations and who will and will not get a house.

Keeping up to densities and yet not overcrowding is yet another challenge as one is always trying to construct the maximum on the minimum land. Sometimes we construct the minimum and actually make it viable by accommodating additional families. These are choices that are always a reflection of the local socio-political context and demand.

Including the federation leadership in these decisions is always another challenge especially when the NGO itself is learning for the first time.

Using the first project to set a precedent for future similar projects is often a challenge as well. We need to make sure that we do not loose the opportunity to scale up such precedents.

The next challenge is to institutionalize this change in the city policies and programs. Changing norms and standards for constructing houses for the poor is always a challenge for cities. Such interventions have the scope to influence these standards