Building Resilience Brick-by-Brick in Namibia
Organize
As of this year, the Shack Dwellers Federation of Namibia (SDFN) has organized 724 groups in 86 cities. The federation has been recognized for decades of strength as an organizer of informal communities around savings and self-build housing in Namibia. These efforts were recognized in 2015 by a campaign launched by the honourable Monica Geingos, First Lady of Namibia, and the CEO of Standard Bank Namibia. The Buy A Brick campaign sells eraser bricks in Standard Bank branches and donates money raised to the federation for construction of permanent houses for low and no-income Namibians in order to “erase shacks in Namibia”. Federation organizing was crucial to shaping this innovative Corporate Social Investment (CSI) program that is unique in its capacity to support the efforts of the poor to improve their homes and cities.
Collaborate
In 2017, the collaboration raised N$2 million – representing a 43% increase from the previous year and supporting the construction of 54 houses by the federation. The funds received are loaned to communities through the federation’s Urban Poor Fund at a monthly interest rate of 0.5%. Repayments feed the revolving fund in order to extend more finance to the poorest and to construct more homes. Federation members in Namibia have become experts in the art of housing construction and settlement upgrading. With support from its support NGO, Namibia Action Housing Group (NAHG), the Association of African Planning Schools (AAPS), and the Namibia University of Science and Technology, the federation is highly adept at facilitating planning studios and collaborating with students and local officials in hands-on approaches to inclusive settlement upgrading.
Thrive
The federation aims to build 1,000 homes per year and the Buy A Brick campaign aims to mobilize the private sector to support the urban poor to achieve this goal. Standard Bank has admirably committed to support the federation through this campaign for as long as the need for housing among the urban poor persists. When the general public, the government, organized communities, local NGOs, and the private sector come together in such efforts the potential for scale is infinite. Through peer-to-peer exchange, SDI seeks to encourage replication of this inspired initiative throughout the network.
The Namibia shack dweller federation efforts contribute to improved city resilience by demonstrating effective multi-stakeholder collaboration, supporting integrated shelter planning, and empowering urban poor stakeholders. Skills building in planning and construction and improved access to safe and affordable housing are all indicators of improved resilience.
This post is part of a series of case studies from our 2017 Annual Report titled ‘The Road to Resilience.’ Emerging from the field of ecology, ‘resilience’ describes the capacity of a system to maintain or recover from disruption or disturbance. Cities are also complex systems and a resilience framework addresses the inter- connectedness of formal and informal city futures. Moreover, it enables a nuanced reflection on the nature of shocks and chronic stressors – recognising that the latter are particularly acute in slum dweller communities and that this critically undermines the entire city’s economic, social, political, and environmental resilience.As with personal resilience, city resilience demands awareness, acknowledgment of reality, and a capacity to move beyond reactivity to responses that are proactive, thoughtful, and beneficial to the whole. The most enlightened individuals and cities will be those that understand their responsibility to the most vulnerable and to the planet. Our 2017 Annual Report showcases some of SDI’s achievements over the past year on the road to resilience. Click here for the full report.
Improving Public Sanitation in Masala Market, Ndola
Organize
As of 2017, the Zambia Homeless and Poor People’s Federation (ZHPPF) has organized 600 groups in 45 cities and towns. The federation has long organized communities around the issue of sanitation. This year ZHPPF took on the challenge of creating a public sanitation facility for one of the busiest markets in Zambia: Masala Market in Ndola. The market houses some 3,000 vendors, including fish, fruit and vegetable traders, restaurants, agro-product sellers, carpenters, and hardware suppliers. Situated close to the Main Masala Bus Station, which serves passengers from across the country, an estimated 30,000 shoppers pass through the market each day. Given the volume of trade and proximity to consumables, the need for adequate sanitation facilities in the prevention of disease is critical. Savings groups in the area organized and negotiated with local authorities for permission to design a project to address these needs.
Collaborate
Ndola City Council expressed willingness to work with the federation on the project and was eager to explore new strategies for ensuring public service facilities do not quickly fall into disrepair. The federation offered assurances that the community could manage the facility and gave examples from its own experience and the experiences of peers in the SDI network. With the agreement of the Council to provide land and technical assistance, the 22 savings groups in the area took part in a participatory design process for the facility, which will go beyond a simple public toilet and instead become a multi-purpose income-generating venture. The community received training in construction and contributed sweat equity to bring their ideas to life.
Thrive
The finishing touches are being put on the unit, which is set to launch early in 2018. More and more federations are exploring ways to combine basic service facilities with business to make the most of precious land in informal settlements, incentivize good maintenance of facilities to protect the viability of attached businesses, and even cross-subsidize the cost of maintenance. The facility will employ 11 local people, drawn from the federation membership, and market vendors anticipate attracting more shoppers once the facility is complete.
The Zambia slum dweller federation efforts contribute to city resilience by improving sanitation, reducing human vulnerability, and demonstrating strong community engagement with government.
This post is part of a series of case studies from our 2017 Annual Report titled ‘The Road to Resilience.’ Emerging from the field of ecology, ‘resilience’ describes the capacity of a system to maintain or recover from disruption or disturbance. Cities are also complex systems and a resilience framework addresses the inter- connectedness of formal and informal city futures. Moreover, it enables a nuanced reflection on the nature of shocks and chronic stressors – recognising that the latter are particularly acute in slum dweller communities and that this critically undermines the entire city’s economic, social, political, and environmental resilience.As with personal resilience, city resilience demands awareness, acknowledgment of reality, and a capacity to move beyond reactivity to responses that are proactive, thoughtful, and beneficial to the whole. The most enlightened individuals and cities will be those that understand their responsibility to the most vulnerable and to the planet. Our 2017 Annual Report showcases some of SDI’s achievements over the past year on the road to resilience. Click here for the full report.
Building Savings & Social Capital in Malawi
Organize
As of 2017, the Malawi Homeless People’s Federation has organized 505 groups in 28 cities and towns. It is well known that the central organizing tenet of SDI revolves around women-led savings groups. The value of savings to a poor community’s ability to absorb or adapt to shocks and stressors is paramount, and the social networks that women-led savings group create amplify benefits to community resilience. In 2017, the federation facilitated the formation of new savings zones in Thyolo, Mulanje, Chikhwawa (Southern Region), Mchinji and Salima (Central Region), and Rumphi and Nkhata-Bay (Northern Region). The formation of the savings zones has helped create frequent learning platforms that enhance the social, political, and economic capital in these local networks. In addition, the year saw the federation conduct regional youth savings symposiums. The symposiums brought together youth leaders from all districts and the mobilization of approximately 500 youth savers.
Collaborate
During the course of the year, the federation participated in dozens of meetings and forums organized by government and its agencies. During the meetings, the federation advocated for the adoption of federation rituals – especially savings – throughout slum communities in Malawi. As a result of the meetings, the federation entered into an agreement with the Reserve Bank of Malawi (RBM). The agreement will see the federation working hand in hand with the central bank in mobilizing and training savings groups throughout the country. The federation was identified by the central bank after noticing that almost all the other savings approaches have been plagued by mismanagement. This agreement is expected to increase the visibility of the federation, resulting in the opening of new saving zones, an increased number of organized urban poor communities, and reduced vulnerability in slum communities.
Thrive
As savings groups and networks mature, they move into loan-making and explore more creative community funds to support basic services and infrastructure projects. Households contribute monthly to funds from which they are able to take loans. Within the savings group structures, the federation has introduced training on group investments, documentation on the impact of savings, and loan interest tracking and management. To increase livelihood options, close to 100 youths were equipped with skills in the production of various art and craft products and one group in Lilongwe opened a bakery. These efforts enhance financial literacy and access in urban poor communities and create improved economic livelihoods. The networking of these groups at settlement, city, and national levels builds social and political capital in urban poor communities.
The Malawi slum dweller federation efforts contribute to city resilience through the building of collective identity and community support as well as the building of skills and training that improve urban poor livelihoods.
This post is part of a series of case studies from our 2017 Annual Report titled ‘The Road to Resilience.’ Emerging from the field of ecology, ‘resilience’ describes the capacity of a system to maintain or recover from disruption or disturbance. Cities are also complex systems and a resilience framework addresses the inter- connectedness of formal and informal city futures. Moreover, it enables a nuanced reflection on the nature of shocks and chronic stressors – recognising that the latter are particularly acute in slum dweller communities and that this critically undermines the entire city’s economic, social, political, and environmental resilience.As with personal resilience, city resilience demands awareness, acknowledgment of reality, and a capacity to move beyond reactivity to responses that are proactive, thoughtful, and beneficial to the whole. The most enlightened individuals and cities will be those that understand their responsibility to the most vulnerable and to the planet. Our 2017 Annual Report showcases some of SDI’s achievements over the past year on the road to resilience. Click here for the full report.
What’s Cooking in Urban Africa? A Michelin Star Chef Travels Africa’s Slums on a Quest for Cooking Wisdom
Toxic smoke of household cooking with charcoal or paraffin kills 4.3 million people every year — more than HIV/AIDS and malaria combined — and primarily affects women and children. SDI’s clean cooking initiative – providing clean, safe, affordable cookstoves to slum dweller communities – improves public health in slum communities and adds to incremental upgrading efforts. This is a valuable intermediary solution for the poorest households – especially women and children.
To raise awareness for clean cooking, SDI’s co-founder Joel Bolnick has taken to the road, traveling across Southern and East Africa with Michelin Star chef Alan Wise, Clean Cooking Revolution, and Twins on Tour to connect with communities and produce a series of cooking competitions in slums and a cookbook featuring the winning recipes captured on the road.
Learn more in the presentation above and click here to pre-order your book today.
Revolutionary Planning: The Mukuru Special Planning Area, Nairobi
Organize
As of 2017, the Kenya slum dwellers federation – Muungano wa Wanavijiji – has organized 1,026 groups in 21 cities and towns. In Nairobi, the Mukuru belt of slums forms one of Nairobi’s largest informal settlements. A 2016 structure count by the federation established the settlement’s 100,561 units comprised of residential households, businesses, institutions, and utilities. In March 2017, these settlements were declared a Special Planning Area (SPA) by the County Government of Nairobi. This landmark declaration offers an opportunity to rethink the conventional city planning toolkit as it relates to large-scale inclusive informal settlement upgrading. It also offers a welcome commitment to the tenure security of Mukuru’s slum dwellers. The declaration allots a 2-year period for a participatory planning process to develop an innovative area-based upgrading plan for Mukuru. Cognizant of the rare and urgent opportunity this presents, the federation is undertaking intense organization of the Mukuru settlements into women-led savings groups and neighborhood associations. This should help to ensure robust community participation at every stage of the planning process and the incorporation of local businesses and enterprises in the upgrading and service delivery value chain. The federation is committed to ensuring youth are not excluded from this process and are organizing them to contribute to the visioning and execution of the redevelopment through SDI’s Know Your City TV and other Muungano youth support programs.
Collaborate
The Mukuru SPA declaration is the result of action-based research and interactions between the Nairobi County Government and a number of institutions that work with the Mukuru community, through support from the International Development Research Center (IDRC) and SDI. Partnering organizations include Muungano wa Wanavijiji, SDI Kenya, Akiba Mashinani Trust, Katiba Institute, Strathmore University, University of California Berkeley, and the University of Nairobi. These organizations have worked with county government to establish thematic consortia assigned the role of contributing to an inclusive master plan. Each thematic consortium develops a solution that encompasses the community vision, financing, legal, and spatial dimensions. This process is aimed at producing policy briefs that offer a representative vision and range of solutions to be consolidated through a series of planning studios.
Thrive
The federation’s enumeration data reveals a debilitating poverty penalty that this project seeks to unlock. Redirecting funds currently spent on exploitative, informally-managed housing, services, and land, and developing strategies for channeling these funds towards upgrading, will serve as a precedent for citywide resilience-building efforts. These resources are not mere pocket change: Muungano and its partners uncovered that slum residents in Mukuru pay some 45-142% more for electricity, 172% more per cubic meter of water, and more per square meter for a shack than middle class housing residents do for formal housing. Dismantling this poverty trap and improving lives and livelihoods is the objective of the Mukuru SPA consortia whose work is scheduled for completion by March 2019.
The Kenya slum dweller federation efforts contribute to improved city resilience by setting precedents for actively engaged citizens to be part of urban planning at scale, by engaging in proactive multi-stakeholder collaboration, and coproducing appropriate land use and upgrading plans.
Read more about the Mukuru Special Planning Area here.
This post is part of a series of case studies from our 2017 Annual Report titled ‘The Road to Resilience.’ Emerging from the field of ecology, ‘resilience’ describes the capacity of a system to maintain or recover from disruption or disturbance. Cities are also complex systems and a resilience framework addresses the inter- connectedness of formal and informal city futures. Moreover, it enables a nuanced reflection on the nature of shocks and chronic stressors – recognising that the latter are particularly acute in slum dweller communities and that this critically undermines the entire city’s economic, social, political, and environmental resilience.As with personal resilience, city resilience demands awareness, acknowledgment of reality, and a capacity to move beyond reactivity to responses that are proactive, thoughtful, and beneficial to the whole. The most enlightened individuals and cities will be those that understand their responsibility to the most vulnerable and to the planet. Our 2017 Annual Report showcases some of SDI’s achievements over the past year on the road to resilience. Click here for the full report.
SDI partners with Twins on Tour to share stories of African youth
Next week SDI’s co-founder Joel Bolnick will hit the road with Morgan and Gabriel, the brothers who make up Twins on Tour. Read more below about how this project came into being and what this partnership hopes to achieve for the twins and for SDI.
Guest post by Morgan & Gabriel Bolnick, Twins on Tour.
It all started with a moment of inspiration.
The idea that Gabriel stumbled upon some 12 months ago – then seeming like a distant, and highly unlikely possibility – is now only days away from becoming a reality.
What was the it? Simple: to piggy-back on the upcoming visits of one of SDI’s co-founders, Joel Bolnick, to SDI’s African affiliates and, while he discusses politics and strategy with the community leaders, we would document the lives, tell the stories of, and get to know youth living in Africa’s slums.
So, what’s it all about?
We are motivated by a belief that the world’s wealthy minority (us included) misunderstands the majority who live in poverty. Because of this, soul and hope-crushing judgments are often (and, in many cases, unconsciously) made. Thus, by changing the perceptions that wealthy youth have of less privileged youth, and maybe even vice-versa, we hope to unify youth globally, irrespective of class, gender or race – making space for transformation and change.
And, who are these twins?
Twin brothers Morgan and Gabriel Bolnick are departing on a Cape Town to Kampala road trip on the 4th of June. This road trip will take them through cities and slums, towns and villages in their quest to explore what it means to be African.
“Born in Zimbabwe, I have always felt a deep connection with Africa. I want to use this opportunity to learn from this continent and other young people – to open space for the talents and creativity of all kids to shine and get the light we all deserve.” – Morgan
“I understood from a very young age that I live a privileged life. Not only do I want to see how other people live, but I want to find a way to give back – to feel part of something bigger than me.” – Gabriel
This is about the stories of Africa’s youth.
We are going to be telling the stories of Africa’s youth– with a focus on those living in the slums of Africa’s growing cities. We will do this through interviews, photos, and daily vlogs on our Instagram and Facebook pages. Follow us to travel Sub-Saharan Africa with us from your couch!
Who is helping us to make this happen?
Twins on Tour will be using the ION360 camera to document plastic pollution throughout Africa for environment organization Earth Day Network. We will also document the What’s Cooking in Urban Africa? Master Chef series, featuring Michelin Star Chef Alan Wise, in collaboration with Clean Cooking Revolution and SDI.
Inspired to help? You can!
Head over to our Thundafund page for a more in-depth explanation of our 180-day expeditions, as well as to see how you can make this journey to the hearts of Africa’s youth, even better.
